Color: Because we tend to have strong emotional connections with color, it's a powerful decorating tool for creating mood. Color is also a great unifier of dissimilar materials and styles. By means of a well-chosen color scheme a decorator can bring together oriental rugs and contemporary furniture or linen and leather and make them work harmoniously. From science class, you might recall that light is composed of wavelengths. Color is the way our eyes react to the different wavelengths. The three properties belonging to color that affect our perception are hue, value and intensity:

• Hue is determined by where the color falls on the wavelength spectrum. Simply put, hue is the name of the color. Red, yellow, aqua and green are examples of hues. Not too complicated, right?
• Value describes the brightness or darkness of a color. White is on one end of the value scale and black is on the other. When you add white, you're tinting a color's value and shading a color when you add black. When decorating, the element of value can be used to emphasize or minimize color contrasts. This plays up or plays down the features of a room. Usually, darker values make surfaces appear to recede, while lighter values bring them forward by highlighting them.
• Intensity describes how bright or dull a color is - its strength. Think of it as turning the color control up or down on your television. The intensity of a color can be reduced, or dulled, by graying it. Some advocate adding gray, but the best way is to add the color's compliment (opposite on the color wheel) to the mix.