Chromatic intensity refers to the chromatic brilliance of a colour. Adding grey to any colour will lower its intensity. Of the primary colours, red has the highest intensity, followed by yellow, then blue. The intensity of the colours you choose will affect your colour scheme in a number of ways. A room decorated in very intense colours will be highly stimulating-reminiscent of the colours at a funfair. However, you’ll find such strong colours quite unsuitable for a living room and other leisure areas of your house, where you spend a lot of time. Only use intense colours in small doses. Flowers, cushions and ornaments present excellent opportunities for highly colourful temporary displays. Remember that a room decorated totally in low intensity colours can be very dull. The stimulus of stronger colours in small areas of the room is essential. Try to create a balance between the two extremes. For living areas, it’s a good idea to concentrate on gradual colour changes for the walls. For instance, you could start off with a brilliant red and, by adding more and more green, merge gradually into a rich brown. In the same way, you can merge yellow into cream, or blue into steel grey. By adding white or black you can change a colour totally. For example, red can be turned into a restful pink by adding white. The intensity of the colour you choose should be related to the size and shape of the surface to be covered. Warm colours like red, orange and yellow are very dominant particularly in a small room. This can be extremely tiring on the eye. Such colours are best used for highlighting the colour of objects like lampshades and ornaments. Blues and greens are cool, retiring colours. They are good when used as background shades. Objects painted in these colours tend to lose definition. This can be useful in painting ugly but essential-furniture. You would be well advised to avoid the use of contrasting full intensity colours, such as red and green or orange and violet. They can provide initial excitement, but the long term effect will be tiring and dazzling.