Intense is a saturation descriptor used in several coloured-stone grading systems to indicate a colour that is strongly saturated without being so concentrated as to fall into the "vivid" or "deep" ranges. The word appears in GIA's coloured-stone colour-grading framework, in Lotus Gemology's published colour scales, and across the broader trade in dealer descriptions of saturation. It is not standardised across all laboratories, and the precise position of "intense" on a saturation scale varies between grading systems.

In the GIA coloured-stone framework saturation is described on a scale running through grey or brown, weak, moderate, strong, vivid, with the intermediate "intense" tier sitting in the upper part of the strong-to-vivid range. Lotus Gemology's published descriptors for ruby and sapphire use comparable language with their own anchors. The term "Intense Green" for emerald, where it appears, is a market and laboratory descriptor rather than a normative GIA term.

For working dealers the practical point is that "intense" without a referenced grading system is a marketing word, not a defined gemmological term. When the description matters for valuation or claim purposes it should be tied to a specific laboratory framework or paired with a colour-comparison reference.