The colour of an element depends upon its absorption spectra, or the colours of light that it absorbs. The colours it does not absorb, it reflects, and this is the colour it presents to the observer. Thus sulphur is yellow because it absorbs the blue out of the incident white light, leaving yellow. Most substances are white because they do not absorb in the visible part of the spectrum.
All metals have a shiny 'metallic' appearance. This is because the outer valence electrons within metals are free to roam throughout the metal, not being bound to any atom within it, giving the metal the property of electrical conductivity. Because, by Paulis' exclusion principle, no two electrons are allowed to have exactly the same energy, the free electrons take up a continuous spectrum of energies, called an energy band. It is these free electrons which totally reflect all incident light (light being an electromagnetic wave, which readily interacts with the random seething sea of free electrons representing a wide range of frequencies or colours) preventing light of most frequencies from penetrating more than a few wavelengths into a conducting material. This gives metals their shiny appearance.
Bromine is red, iodine is blue, beryllium is sweet and meitnerium new.
