Abstract Recent advances in mechanics and materials provide routes to develop stretchable electronics that offer performance of conventional wafer-based devices but with the ability to be deformed to arbitrary shape. Many new applications become possible ranging from electronic eye cameras to wearable electronics, to bio-integrated therapeutic devices. This paper reviews mechanics of stretchable electronics in terms of two main forms of stretchable designs. One is wavy design, which can provide one-dimensional stretchability. The other is island-bridge design, which can be stretched in all directions. Mechanics models and their comparisons to experiments and finite element simulations are reviewed for these two designs. The results provide design guidelines for the development of stretchable electronics.