Women find men more appealing when they are either pictured wearing red or framed in red.
Red is known to increase the compatibility of women to men and has also been shown to enhance performance in sport. But this is the first time researchers have shown that it works with men too, says a Telegraph report.
"Red is typically thought of as a sexy colour for women only," said Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester in the US and the University of Munich in Germany.
"Our findings suggest that the link between red and sex also applies to men," Elliot added.
Twenty-five men and 32 women briefly viewed a black-and-white photo of a man in a polo shirt, surrounded by a red or white background, according to the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Using a nine-point scale, they answered three questions: "How attractive do you think this person is?", "How pleasant is this person to look at?" and "If I were to meet the person in this picture face to face, I would think he is attractive."
Women who looked at a man surrounded by red or white rated the man surrounded by red a little over one point higher on a nine-point scale of attractiveness, a statistically significant bump. It had no effect on men.
Another experiment featured a man in a colour photo, dressed in either a red or a green shirt.
A pool of 55 women rated the man in red as significantly more attractive - on average, nearly one point higher on the same nine-point scale.
Although red means different things in different cultures, the finding of women (but not men) drawn to men in red was consistent across countries.