Color marking on stainless steel has been available for sometime but still it has not been used widely in consumer products. Some industrial applications have been seen. New MOPA fiber lasers allow independent tuning of the pulse width and the marking process can be optimized for producing colors with better quality and visual appearance. Laser processing of metal surfaces creates an oxide layer on the surface. The thickness of this layer defines how white light is reflected from the sample. What in principle is only a thin oxide layer on the surface can be seen as different colors by the viewer. In this study, the visual appearance of laser marked surfaces was optimized by varying the pulse width, laser power, pulse energy and scanning velocity. The aim was to create uniform oxide layers on the surface, which would appear as high quality color marking. Marking quality was evaluated by visual examination as well as optical microscopy. Surface properties were measured using SEM-EDS and the effect of the viewing angle was examined using a spectral camera. The advantage of pulse width tuning is discussed based on these results. Application samples are presented.