Steel, concrete and their combination materials are the most 6commonly used materials for civil engineering structural systems such as buildings, bridge structures and other structures. Recently, however, fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites, a relatively new composite material made of fibers and polymer resins, have been gradually used in structural systems as an alternative structural material. This paper describes a comparison of design strength equations for steel column and FRP composite column based on design philosophies. The safety factors used in allowable stress design (ASD) are relatively higher in FRP structural design than steel structural design. Column critical stress equations of FRP composites column from an experimental study can be represented by Euler elastic buckling equation at the long-range of slenderness, and an exponential form at the short-range of slenderness as defined in Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) of steel column. The column strength of steel and FRP composite columns in large slenderness is independent of material strength, this result verified the elastic buckling equation as derived by Eq. (15) and Eq. (5).