Control on the wettability of solid materials by liquid is a classical and key issue in surface engineering. Optically transparent water-repellent silica films have been spin-deposited on glass substrates at room temperature (similar to 27 degrees C). The wetting behavior of silica films was controlled by surface silylation method using dimethylchlorosilane (DMCS) as a silylating reagent. A coating sol was prepared by keeping the molar ratio of methyltrimethoxysilane (MTMS) precursor, methanol (MeOH) solvent, water (H2O) constant at 1:8.8:2.64 respectively, with 4 M NH4OH as a catalyst throughout the experiments and the amount of DMCS in hexane was varied from 0 to 12 vol.%. It was found that with an increase in vol.% of DMCS, the water contact angle values of the films increased from 78 degrees to 136 degrees. At 12 vol.% of DMCS, the film shows static water contact angle as high as 1368 and water sliding angle as low as 18 degrees. The hydrophobic silica films retained their water repellency up to a temperature 295 degrees C and above this temperature the films show superhydrophilic behavior. These results are compared with our earlier research work done on silylation of silica surface using hexamethyldisilazane (HMDZ) and trimethylchlorosilane (TMCS). The hydrophobic silica films were characterized by taking into consideration the Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, thermo gravimetric-differential thermal (TG-DT) analyses, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), % of optical transmission, thermal and chemical aging tests, humidity tests, static and dynamic water contact angle measurements. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.