Speakers can use the emerging science of color to enhances effects during their speeches and produce stronger impressions on their audiences.

For example, there’s a widespread impression that soft hues and gentle colors are relaxing, and that relaxation is a good state to be in for paying attention and learning in an optimal way.  But the research indicates something a little different.  In turns out that students pay better attention and retain more when they are subjected to bright, vivid colors – especially reds, and yellows.

This finding suggests that it might be a good idea to throw away those beautiful pastel slides you’ve developed, and instead give your audience some pulse-pounding vivid reds and yellows.  It turns out that these colors do raise the heart rates of viewers, and that seems to be connected to greater alertness and thus enhanced memory.

Color selection in the design world tends to go in trends as olive green, say, becomes the color of the moment, only to give way to lavender.  You may have to buck some design trends in order to convince your team to accept bright yellow and red.

OK, so what should you wear to compete with your newly vivid slides?  That one is easy, and perhaps a little surprising, too.  We’ve long equated red clothing with sexiness, and the research bears that out.  But it turns out that wearing black increases your audience’s sense of your stylishness.

So is the optimal turnout a red and black combination?  Both colors increase your perceived attractiveness, and what else do you need to know?  Find the optimal red-black balance for your image, and you are good to go.  Given that blue is relaxing, unless you are talking about a scary subject and want to keep your audience calm, then stick to red and black.

But don’t give up on blue entirely.  Vivid red may make you smarter, but blue does have a positive effect, too:  it makes you twice as creative.  Embrace blue for the creative brainstorming you ask your audience to do, and stick to red (and yellow) for the important learning moments.

And here’s one color to avoid altogether:  amber, it turns out, makes you sleepy.  Why it’s a good idea to use in traffic lights, I’ll never know, but putting on amber glasses is a good way to filter out blue light and help bring on that peaceful slumber we all crave after a hard day of learning in red or yellow vivid hues.  So don’t use amber colors unless you want your audience to zone out.

There’s a subtler point here, too, about the lights that you are awash in on stage.  Maybe it would be a good idea to tell the lighting person to kill the amber spot and instead put a nice bright yellow light on stage.

Finally, and it gives me a kind of nerdy pleasure to say this:  eat your vegetables. And fruit.  It turns out that a healthy skin tone has a kind of golden glow, and that color is more attractive to others, presumably because we unconsciously associate health with it.  I always thought that yellow mean jaundice, after my dad came back from a trip to Southeast Asia with jaundice and a decidedly yellow skin.  He did not look healthy.  But apparently I need to update my color associations.  And before you ask, the study was conducted on light-skinned people, to contrast yellow-toned skin with tanned skin, which most of us have been conditioned to think is more attractive, but other research has found a similar effect on darker-skinned populations.

There you have it:  the optimal color wheel for speakers’ success.  It may be time to change your slides, your clothes, and your diet.  All in the name of having attentive, besotted audiences.