In this paper, the correlation between the electrochromic performance and the surface morphology of the tungsten trioxide (WO 3 ) thin films sputtered by dc reactive magnetron sputtering with widely varying target-substrate distances was investigated. It is found that the optical density change (∆OD) of films is strongly affected by the target-substrate distance. The coloration efficiency (CE) at 633 nm was also found to be sensitive to the target-substrate distance, with 16 cm 2 /C of film sputtered at 6 cm and 50 cm 2 /C at 18 cm. X-ray diffraction showed that the crystal structure of films was amorphous. By using atomic force microscope to identify the surface porosity of the sputtered WO 3 films, we found that the film at longer target-substrate distance was rough, porous, and having a cone-shaped columns morphology, thus offering a good electrochromic performance for opto-switching applications.