Nickel oxide (NiO) nano- and microstructures were synthesized by the microwave combustion method (MCM) and the conventional combustion method (CCM) using urea as the fuel. The as-synthesized NiO powders were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), high resolution scanning electron microscopy (HR-SEM), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analysis and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) analysis. The XRD results confirmed the formation of cubic phase NiO. The formation of NiO nano- and microstructures were confirmed by HR-SEM and HR-TEM and their possible formation mechanisms were also proposed. The optical absorption and photoluminescence emissions were determined by DRS and PL spectra respectively. The band gap was measured using the Kubelka-Munk model and it shows 3.36 eV for NiO (MCM) and 2.70 eV for NiO (CCM). The magnetic properties of the synthesized NiO nano- and microstructures were investigated with a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) and their hysteresis loops were obtained at room temperature. The relatively high saturation magnetization (21.22 emu/g) of NiO-MCM shows that it is ferromagnetic and low saturation magnetization (7.43 emu/g) of NiO-CCM confirms the superparamagnetic behavior. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.