The kinetics of deposition of bare latex particles onto bare collector surfaces and poly(ethylene oxide)- (PEO-) coated latex particles onto PEO-coated collector surfaces was studied by evanescent wave light scattering. This allowed for the study of the effects of electrostatic and steric interactions affecting particle deposition. The experiments considered the effects of colloid particle surface morphology, solution salt concentration, and hydrodynamic layer thickness of the adsorbed polymer (PEG) on both the colloidal particles, as measured by photon correlation spectroscopy, and the collector surface, as measured by evanescent wave spectroscopy. From the data it was found that bare and smooth latex particles adsorb much more strongly onto collector surfaces than "hairy" latex particles, which have long copolymer chains, such as itachonic acid, grafted onto their surfaces. The rate of deposition of uncoated latex particles onto collectors was found to be about 10 times larger than that of the analogous PEG-coated latex particles. This difference became more pronounced as the polymer molecular weight was increased. These results indicated that the thicker the adsorbed polymer layer, the stronger the steric force preventing deposition of the polymer-coated colloidal particles onto the collector surface. When the combined ellipsometric layer thickness of the particles and the collector surface exceeded a critical value, found to be about 15 nm, no particle deposition onto the collector surface was possible. The depth of the minimum energy required to cause deposition was calculated to be about half a kT unit.