TiO2, a widely used, inexpensive white powder, has been considered the most promising photocatalyst for the degradation of formaldehyde in air. However, the application of TiO2 without other metal and nonmetal doping is limited because it requires UV activation with a high-energy band gap, and <5% of the solar radiation reaching the earth's surface can be used. To improve the photocatalytic performance of TiO2, sol-gel nano TiO2 with Zr doping can be activated by the UV-vis radiation available in sunlight to perform solar photocatalysis. The properties of the ZrxTi1-xO2 catalysts were fully characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Our results demonstrate that the optical response of TiO2 was shifted from UV to the visible light region with the introduction of zirconium. The photocatalytic tests indicated that the ZrxTi1-xO2 catalyst demonstrated higher activity for the degradation of formaldehyde compared with P25 and TiO2 under UV-vis light irradiation with an energy-saving lamp. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.