Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) characteristics of metal spherical nanoshells coated with different dielectric overlayers were investigated in this Letter. Besides band position, it is found that the line width of the symmetric dipole SP resonance is affected by the overlayer coating when the coupling strength of the inner surface cavity mode and outer surface sphere mode is strong. When the surrounding dielectric constant is comparative to that of core silica, narrowest damping width is expected. The computation results also demonstrate that the quality factors and electromagnetic field distribution are dependent on the overlayer coating. Consequently, an appropriate dielectric overlayer coating may be an important way of tuning SP characteristics of metal nanoshells. (C) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.