Many companies enforce a 'dress down Friday' policy as an incentive for office workers to let their hair down at the end of the week.

But according to new research, for many the opposite effect is achieved as people get stressed about what to wear on their day 'off' from the office uniform.

Deadlines and budgets aside, one in ten workers cite dress down Friday as the most stressful time of the week and 15 percent become so stressed by what to wear they even call in sick.

Nearly a quarter have even been late due to indecision and one in five have returned home to change after leaving the house.

Careful planning is essential with one third of us beginning to plan our Friday outfit on Thursday lunchtime with one percent beginning the decision-making process as early as Monday evening.

And it seems that 'dressing down' requires a lot more effort than meets the eye with a staggering 43 percent spending more time on hair, makeup and grooming on a Friday compared to any other day of the working week, with 24 percent choosing the day to experiment with their look.

This experimentation, which adds an average of fifteen minutes to an individual’s morning routine, has also had an effect on our pockets as 50 percent claim to spend more on their Friday fashion than they do for the remainder of the week.

And it seems that the office is increasingly becoming a catwalk with high heels over four inches, party dresses and mini skirts all seen as acceptable Friday attire, especially for the 50 percent of those surveyed who claim to go straight out from work every week.

With 15 percent of men claiming to have pulled a colleague aside to tell them about a Friday fashion faux pas, and one in five women admitting to whispering at the water cooler behind a colleague’s back, it’s not surprising that more than one in ten of us have enlisted the advice of a professional stylist over what to wear to work.

The study, carried out by leading online fashion retailer Very.co.uk, found that regionally, those in Birmingham and the West Midlands are the least confident in choosing their outfits alone, with 53 percent of respondents asking partners, 38 percent asking family members and nearly a quarter asking complete strangers for style advice.

(Read by Emily Cheng. Emily Cheng is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)