The Hashin’s strength criteria are usually employed in first ply failure and damage-onset analysis of fibre-reinforced composites. This work presents optimality conditions of local material orientations for these criteria, in terms of principal stresses and material strength parameters. Each criterion (matrix tensile/compressive, fibre tensile/compressive modes) has its conditions separately derived, analytically, based on a fixed stress field assumption. The conditions found show that orientations which coincide and do not coincide with principal stress directions may minimise local failure indices. These solutions are employed in a proposed algorithm, named HA-OCM (Hashin Optimality Criteria Method), which selectively satisfies the matrix failure modes (either tensile or compressive), iteratively and finite element-wise in composites. It is demonstrated that the HA-OCM is able to design single-layer plane structures with improved failure loads in comparison with designs following only maximum (in absolute) principal stress orientations. Results show that the material orientations have a trend to end up either aligned or at 90° with maximum in absolute principal stress directions. Global optima for compliance are, however, not guaranteed. To give an idea of gains in terms of failure loads, some HA-OCM designs show improvements of 71% and 140%, for example, in comparison with principal stress design.