The effect of various substrate surface treatments on (i) the pre-growth topography and composition of the treated substrate, and (ii) the quality of diamond thin films produced by hot-filament chemical vapour deposition on tungsten carbide substrates, is reported. Two different substrate grain sizes were subjected to various surface treatments. They were then examined for surface material composition and topography using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Subsequently, diamond films were deposited on the samples and their quality analysed by Raman spectroscopy and XRD techniques. These analyses do not indicate a strong dependence between the substrate grain size and film quality. However, the surface-treatment method affects the resulting substrate surface topography and film quality.