Additive manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a revolutionary process in industry. The most notable feature of the AM process is its ability to produce complex geometric parts by precisely layering deposited material without the use of casting moulds or the need for extensive post-process machining. Although this new manufacturing technique offers great promise, it also presents certain challenges among which residual stresses in the final parts are particularly significant. These stresses can limit the part's resistance to loading and can lead to various amounts of cracks and distortion, undermining one of AM’s main benefits, rapid, near-net-shape production. Therefore, in order to prevent part distortion, it is important to study the causes and mitigation strategies of residual stresses. This study aims to reduce the formation of residual stresses during AM, focusing on the laser directed energy deposition (L-DED) process. the steep thermal gradient inherent tothe L-DED process is the main cause of residual stress formation during deposition. To address this, different methods of altering or minimizing the thermal gradient were investigated in this study. The first step was the production of thin walls by depositing a single track of AISI316L steel powder for 100 layers. The pre-walls were then heat treated to remove any residual stresses. After heat treatment, a post wall of 50 layers was deposited on the initial thin wall. To assess the effects of the deposition of the post-wall on the pre-wall, images of the pre-wall were captured before and after the deposition of the post-wall using a Digital Image Correlation (DIC) setup. The before and after images were then compared to estimate the amount of distortion inflicted in the pre-wall due to the deposition of the post-wall. Four configurations were examined for the purpose of residual stress mitigation: (1) Preheating the build plate (preheated),(2) preheating with additional laser passes between layers at low power (re-heated), (3) preheating with high-power laser passes (re-melted), (4) no preheating or additional laser passes (Reference). comparing samples with and without build-plate preheating, showed that preheated samples exhibited reduced distortion in both scanning and deposition directions. This could be due to the fact that by preheating the build plate we reduce the steep temperature difference between the newly deposited material and the previous layers, thereby reducing the thermal gradient. Preheating can also lead to a slower cooling of the sample, alleviating the rapid contractions that may cause residual stresses in the final deposit. Similarly, preheating combined with re-heating yielded favourable results, while the re-melting configuration also demonstrated promise in minimizing distortion. In conclusion, manipulating the steep thermal gradient in the L-DED process appears to be an effective approach for reducing distortion and mitigating residual stress formation.