The fatigue behaviour of cold rolled and annealed sheet metals are influenced by the anisotropy of mechanical properties due to crystallographic texture. However, the existing fatigue strain-life models are primarily meant for isotropic material behaviour. In the present work, the Coffin-Manson equation for strain-life is modified to include the effect of anisotropy using phenomenological plasticity models. It is observed that the variation of strain hardening exponent is critical to model the strain-life behaviour. Variation of strain hardening exponent with orientation is modelled using existing anisotropic yield criteria. The prediction of fatigue life using the proposed model correlates well with the experimental results of Al6061-T6 along different orientations. The proposed model can be used to predict the fatigue properties along any orientation from the fatigue data along one orientation and monotonic mechanical properties along longitudinal, transverse and diagonal directions. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.