THE majority of women in the south will hold on to their underwear for more than three years, prefer the colour black and wear a matching set most of the time, reveals a candid new survey from TENA Lady.

Delving in to the underwear drawers of 1,000 women, new research from TENA Lady has uncovered some of the nation’s biggest underwear habits. and shed some light on their main health worries down below!

Talk about airing your dirty laundry, a whopping 55 per cent of ladies said that the oldest item of lingerie they own is more than three years old and 17 per cent admitted to keeping theirs for two years.

The majority of women (28 per cent) also said they will re-stock their drawer with new underwear once every six months.

When it comes to the region’s preferred style of underwear, the brief is a firm favourite, with the majority (53 per cent) of women choosing it, followed by a high cut design (17 per cent).

Surprisingly, it appears that ladies have fallen out of love with the thong, which polled last, being the style of choice for only 10 per cent of women.

When asked the colour of the majority of items in their underwear drawer, half of women said black, while white ranked second place, rated by 22 per cent.

The region’s least favourite colour? Red, which dominates only one per cent of women’s drawers. Us Brits are such prudes!

What’s more, 56 per cent of women said they wear matching underwear all the time and, interestingly, 66 per cent said they don’t own a favourite pair of underwear.

Whether it’s pulling out your prettiest lingerie or slipping into your comfiest pants, whatever the occasion, the right underwear can give you the confidence to keep being you.

However, the survey also revealed that 19 per cent of women confessed that the fear of bladder weakness stops them from wearing their favourite underwear.

Shockingly, more women are worried about bladder weakness (31 per cent) than experiencing any other intimate health issues, like thrush (23 per cent) or diarrhoea (21 per cent).

In fact, more women are happy to discuss periods with their friends (56 per cent) than they are bladder weakness (41 per cent).

With up to half (47 per cent) of women experiencing it at some point in their lives, bladder weakness is a common occurrence for many, so shouldn’t be something to feel self-conscious about.

Encouragingly, 34 per cent of women said they feel more confident to do the things they love when wearing protective underwear like TENA Lady products, and 39 per cent said they’d like to see the topic of bladder weakness discussed more openly in the media.

“We all know that putting on our favourite underwear makes us feel good about ourselves.

"But for the 19 per cent of women that hold back from doing this because of the fear of experiencing bladder weakness, this is something we strive to change,” says Rachel Sumner, Brand Manager for TENA Lady.