A conceptually new approach which recognises the continuous nature of the stress–strain characteristic of stainless steel has recently been developed by the authors for the prediction of the strength of compressed plate elements in stainless steel members. This method does not use the classification system found in modern codes dealing with the structural design of carbon steel members. The original development was limited to plate elements supported on both longitudinal edges; the basic concept is expanded herein to cover a wider range of cases. The resulting design procedure forms part of a general treatment of stainless steel structural members that predicts resistances significantly in excess of those obtained from currently available design methods. These resistances are found to accord well with the observed strength of sections obtained in laboratory tests.