Wearing This Color Makes You More Attractive To Men

When choosing your outfit, how often do you pick a piece for its attraction point? From form-fitting jeans to a little black dress, chances are your choices are deliberate. But did you know that there is one color you can wear that makes you appear more attractive to men? Perhaps it's not such a shocker, as the color is associated with lipstick, lingerie, and the infamous room in "Fifty Shades of Grey": red.

According to a 2021 study in Current Psychology, men rated women in red lingerie to be more sexually receptive, attractive, and appealing than if they wore green lingerie. Similarly, a 2019 study in Color Research and Application found that men preferred women to wear red on a date, even though women tended to prefer to wear blue or yellow. On the surface, this might make you want to throw out all the other colors in your wardrobe. But a deeper dive into the research shows that the colors have more to do with the context.

You could put on your best outfit for a profile pic on dating apps, but what color is your background? A 2008 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ran a series of experiments where men would rate a woman in terms of her attractiveness and sexual desirability. The only difference between the pictures the men were shown was the color of the background in the woman's picture. Compared to white, gray, green, and blue backgrounds, a red background scored higher ratings of attractiveness. Not only that, but a red background made men more likely to ask the woman out and spend more money on a date.

Men should also maybe add red backgrounds to their dating profile pics, according to a 2010 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. This study did a similar thing to the previous study by changing only the backgrounds of the profile photos. Men with red backgrounds were rated as more attractive and had a higher status than men with other background colors.

When a color has meaning to someone, that color can accompany specific thoughts, attitudes, and behavior. Some colors can affect your sleep. When you see red on a school paper, it could signify failure. Yet red could mean something else in social contexts. Particularly in women, red could indicate sexuality (think "The Scarlet Letter"). Even if you wear red to prepare for that meet-cute, red isn't always the best color in every context.

Red is sometimes connected to hostility, according to a 2014 study in the Journal of Personality. People who are more hostile tend to prefer red and see red more often than non-hostile people. Wearing red might also make people think you are angry, according to a 2015 study in Biology Letters. Men who wore red in photos were rated as more aggressive than if they wore blue or gray, and men also believed that wearing red signified dominance.

A 2016 study in Evolutionary Psychology suggested that even though a woman might wear red to feel sexually attractive, it might be most suitable if she's looking for a short-term relationship. On the other hand, wearing white might point to a long-term relationship. When people rated a woman's attractiveness in long-term and short-term relationship contexts, the color of the woman's clothing had no effect.

Is all this just a matter of what color you like to wear? It's possible. A 2010 study in Evolutionary Psychology took a series of pictures of people wearing different colored shirts and had others rate their attractiveness. When raters saw the color of the shirt, they rated people wearing red and black shirts as more attractive than when they wore other colors. However, when the color of the shirt wasn't seen by the rater, the people wearing white shirts were seen as less attractive than when they wore the other colored shirts. When a third experiment had digitally altered red shirts to white, they were still rated to be as attractive as if the person wore a red shirt. In other words, the color you wear could make you more attractive because you feel different when you wear different colors.

According to a 2017 study in the European Journal of Social Psychology, it might all be about what colors make you feel more attractive. The study asked people to wear either a red or blue shirt and then judge themselves on their attractiveness. People felt more attractive wearing red than blue.