Biofouling confers many disadvantages and undesirable effects to ion-exchange membranes surfaces. The present work shows, for the first time, the interest in a self-assembled bilayer coating association of poly(diallyl-dimethyl-ammonium) chloride (PDADMAC) and poly(styrene sulfonic) acid (PSS) via a layer-by-layer (LbL) technique deposition on Nafion (R) 117 membrane as an anti-biofouling approach. The bilayer PDADMAC/PSS was a non-permanent, easily exchangeable coating doing a protective layer on the surface of the cationic-exchange membrane to reduce its biofouling from Pseudomonas putida suspension. The possibility of recovering the membrane permeability using a three-step anti-fouling route is shown and estimated in terms of NaCl permeability, Li+ transference number and membrane surface average roughness from atomic force microscopy (AFM) by morphological/topographical analysis. Crown Copyright (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.