An effort has been made in this paper to investigate a newly developed optical material, namely calcium yttrium vanadate Ca3Y(VO4)(3) (CYV) phosphor, in three different combinations such as CYV:Sm, CYV:Ho and CYV:Tm in order to identify red, green and blue (tri)colors, respectively. These rare-earth (RE) doped vanadate based phosphors were prepared by the co-precipitation method. The emission spectrum of CYV:Sm has shown an intense reddish orange emission transition (4)G(5/2)-H-6(7/2) at 602 nm with lambda(ex) = 305 nm, a green emission transition S-5(2)-I-5(8) at 545 nm with lambda(ex) = 305 nm for CYV:Ho phosphor, and for CYV:Tm phosphor, an intense blue emission transition (1)G(4)-H-3(6) at 476 nm with lambda(ex) = 305 nm has been observed. Emission performances of these phosphors have been explained in terms of energy level diagrams. Besides the measurement of the photoluminescence (PL) of these phosphors, their nature and structural details have also been investigated from X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) studies. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.