It is intense, but it anchors the rest of it nicely. I think it is lovely just as you have it now. I wouldn't buy a darker color. They often look dull and uninteresting in a quilt, I think, but then I was never very fond of what they call Civil War reproductions. Some things are just better left in the past. <G> You did wash the fabric, didn't you, because reds and blues are notorious for bleeding.