We report the influence of thickness on optical and structural properties of BFO thin films grown by PLD method in this paper. In the present work, highly oriented single phase BFO thin films of 200 nm and 600 nm thicknesses were deposited on ITO coated glass substrates. The XRD results reveal the growth of BFO thin films along (0 1 0) plane with rhombohedral perovskite structure. The compositional investigation of thin films was carried out by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The optical properties of thin films have been recorded using UV-vis and photoluminescence spectroscopy. The values of optical band gap of BFO thin films were found to be 2.60 eV and 2.36 eV for 200 nm and 600 nm thickness respectively. Photoluminescence spectra of thin films reveal that the near band edge emission centered over the 484 nm. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.