We adopt a compact TiO2 (c-TiO2) layer on Nb-doped TiO2 (NTO)/Sn-doped indium oxide (ITO) multilayered electrodes, which are transparent conducting oxide (TCO) electrodes, to improve their transmittance for high-efficiency dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). An NTO layer was deposited on ITO by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and then a c-TiO2 layer was deposited on the NTO/ITO multilayer by spin-coating a sol. The transmittance spectrum of the c-TiO2/NTO/ITO multilayered photoelectrodes varied with the thickness of TiO2. The short circuit current and energy conversion efficiency of the photoelectrodes also varied with the thickness of the c-TiO2 layer, which is similar behavior to the integrated value of the transmittance in the wavelength range from 500 to 600 nm. Finally, the DSSC employing the 160 nm-thick c-TiO2 layer exhibited the most improved energy conversion efficiency, compared to the DSSC without the c-TiO2 layer. Our results demonstrate that the unfavorable optical properties of TCO, e.g. NTO, for DSSCs can be enhanced by the formation of an additional thin layer, e.g. c-TiO2. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.