Do you want a boyfriend? Then you had better buy yourself a red dress. That’ s the message coming from the Daily Mail, who are basing their hypothesis on the results of  a new UK survey.

‘Men are most likely to form a relationship with a woman who wears red on the first date,’ the newspaper says, before warning women off yellow and brown.

The survey, which was carried out on more than 2,300 UK-based people, all of whom are currently in relationships, aimed to ‘discover exactly which colour of clothing was most likely to catch the eye of both men and women when searching for a mate, and just how significant clothing colour can be when looking for love,’ reports the Mail.

Ninety-two per cent of those interviewed remembered what their partner wore on their first date, and when they were asked if colour played a part in attraction, 69 per cent of men and 64 per cent of women said that it did.

"Men disliked women in yellow and brown according to the survey."

Men disliked women in yellow and brown while women steered clear of men in pink (note: you can absolutely get away with pink if you are Jarvis Cocker).

We were of the opinion that you should just wear something ‘nice’ on a first date but now, thanks to this new survey, commissioned by a website called voucherscodepro.co.uk, we have a whole new colour-coded anxiety to contend with on first dates. 

George Charles, a spokesman for voucherscodepro.co.uk, suggested that people who reject first dates based on the colour of their clothes might actually be doing so to ‘protect’ themselves.

'It is human nature to want to find faults and imperfections within these individuals in order to protect ourselves from hurt later down the road,’ Charles, who sounds like he has been reading a lot of self-help literature, said. 'It therefore makes sense that before you really get to know someone, fashion sense, and in particular, clothing colour choice, is one of the first things the brain will notice and evaluate for later analysis of a rendezvous.'

After red, the most popular colours with men are blue, green, black and purple. Just in case you care…