[Chris is me]

A lot of elegance and beauty in robotics comes from the design concept itself. In general, mechanically simpler robots with more attention paid to detail tend to look the best. Complexity can also be pretty, but it tends to add a "clunkiness" of sorts that can be hard to overcome. Oftentimes when coming up with concepts, you can almost use this as a gauge for whether or not you're going too complex. If it doesn't look elegant on paper, it may not perform elegantly either.

I also don't think elegance starts and stops with powdercoating. Paint really helps, don't get me wrong, and I'm a big fan of it. But a quality robot will look great without it, and an ugly robot won't look that much better with it.

Something that isn't necessarily easy to do, but helps a lot with the appearance of any robot, is sandblasting parts. It adds a nice look to even non powdercoated robots and it helps everything look more professional.