Mass efficient inelastic thin-walled rectangular hollow section (RHS) struts practically always fail in a combination of local–global interactive buckling and material nonlinearity while also exhibiting high sensitivity to initial imperfections. Nonlinear finite element (FE) models for inelastic thin-walled RHS struts with pre-defined local and global geometric imperfections are developed within the commercial package Abaqus. Using a unified local imperfection measurement based on equal local bending energy, the effects of imperfect cross-section profiles, imperfection wavelength and the degree of localization in the longitudinal direction on the ultimate load and the nonlinear equilibrium path are investigated for four characteristic length struts at different material yielding stress levels. The corresponding most severe imperfection profiles are determined and are found to be qualitatively different to the linear eigenmodes in all cases. Moreover, it is found that the most severe purely periodic imperfections may be used to provide a safe approximation of the ultimate load when the corresponding amplitude is constrained to the manufacturing tolerance level. An extensive parametric study on the wavelength of the most severe periodic imperfection profile is conducted and a relationship for this is proposed in terms of the normalized local slenderness, which compares excellently with the FE results.