Although much effort has been devoted to the mechanical properties of biomimetic coupled laser remelting (BCLR) processed steels, our understanding to the strengthening and toughening mechanisms of it has still remained unclear. To address it, here we studied the roles played by the gridding units of BCLR steels. Tensile tests show that the gridding units have a significant influence on the tensile properties. Interestingly, such an influence is essentially decided by the unit distance of gridding units. The strength increases with the unit distance narrowing while the ductility first increases with it up to a maximum then decreases. The mechanism behind these changes is attributed to the combined effects of the microstructure changes in the units and the stress transition throughout the BCLR samples. (C) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.