In this work, nanostructured CdO films with different coumarin contents in the growth solution were fabricated on glass substrates by the SILAR method. The effects of coumarin content in the bath on optical, structural and morphological properties were studied by means of (UV–vis) spectrophotometer, SEM and XRD analysis. The analysis showed that the band gaps, surface morphologies and XRD peak intensities of the CdO films were found to change with coumarin content. A change in the band gap energy can be attributed to the improvement in crystallinity of the samples. XRD analysis showed that, the films have poly-crystalline structures with decent crystallinity levels.