The present study addressed the interactions between interlimb and intralimb constraints during the control of bimanual multijoint movements. Participants performed eight coordination tasks involving bilateral shoulder-elbow (Experiment I) and shoulder-wrist (Experiment II) movements. Three principal findings were obtained. First, the principle of muscle homology (in-phase coordination), giving rise to mirror symmetrical movements with respect to the mid-sagittal plane, had a powerful influence on the quality of interlimb coordination. In both experiments, the accuracy and stability of inter- and/or- intralimb coordination deteriorated as soon as the anti-phase mode was introduced in one or both joint pairs. However, the mutual influences between bilateral distal and proximal joint pairs varied across coordination tasks and effectors. Second, the impact of intralimb coordination modes on the quality of intralimb coordination was inconsistent between adjacent (Experiment I) and nonadjacent joint (Experiment II) combinations. Third, the mode of interlimb coordination affected the quality of intralimb coordination whereas strong support for the converse effect was not obtained. Taken together, these observations point to a hierarchical control structure whereby interlimb coordination constraints have a stronger impact on the global coordination of the system than intralimb constraints, whose impact is rather effector- and task-dependent. The finding that intralimb coordination is subordinate to interlimb coordination during the production of bimanual multijoint coordination patterns indicates that symmetry is a major organizational principle in the neural control of complex movement.