This article describes a systematic study of the biomimetic hierarchical growth of hydroxyapatite (HA)/titania (TiO 2 ) nanocomposite layered coatings applied by a simple sol-gel dip coating method. Highly stable HA and TiO 2 sols were prepared prior to inducing biomimetic hierarchical growth. Initially, the samples formed a small leaf like structure; however, increasing the dipping cycle resulted in formation of an elongated seed-like structure. Increasing the number of dipping cycles further resulted in a 'bowtie' or straw-bale like nanowire structure with a length of 500 nm and a width of 100 nm. Each nanowire like structure had a width of very few nanometers. The crystalline structures, micro/nano structures and surface properties of the coatings were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy respectively. In vitro cellular assays revealed that the growth of the cells in the 'bowtie' like structure improved over other samples. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.