An overview is provided of the use of eight different optical methods with hole drilling to determine residual stresses. The methods considered are: brittle and photoelastic coatings, Moire interferometry, holographic interferometry, electronic speckle pattern interferometry, interferometric strain rosette, digital image correlation and shearography. A number of applications are summarized, such as the use of hole drilling with holographic interferometry to investigate stresses in rock structures accessed by deep boreholes and to determine manufacturing-induced residual stresses in fillets of small radii.