Application of membranes in the water sector has been widely established and is nowadays considered as standard technology. Although recent technological achievements in membrane technology have resulted in a significant progress towards intensification of the filtration performance, newly emerging tasks still promote fabrication of novel membranes for advanced treatment. Efforts have been mainly addressed to physicochemical surface properties whose appropriate adjustment results in reduction or even elimination of undesired interactions between membrane and filtrated medium, thereby facilitating enhanced performance. The common way to control the character of a surface is its modification during which a membrane surface is functionalized with groups that change the original surface characteristics. A frequently applied approach is surface hydrophilization carried out by deposition of hydrophilic species (higher water affinity as compared to the bare membrane surface). Moreover, hydrophilization is helpful to suppress fouling by hydrophobic substances. Furthermore, fouling can be reduced by a controlled adjustment of the surface charge through amplifying charge repulsion. Improvement of the separation or concentration of proteins can be used as an example. The net result of the aspects hydrophilicity and charge is enhanced flux.The variety of applied modification methods and depositing materials has been recently influenced by several factors such as cost of deposited substances, availability and consequences of the applied deposition techniques on the membrane integrity, environment, life cycle and scale-up feasibility.The generic trend of the membrane modification methods tends to move away from covalent techniques and promote the use of non-covalent bindings. Surface irradiation prior to deposition of functional grafts has been in many cases found harsh and membrane integrity damaging. Other limitations hindering the employment of the covalent modification methods are attributed to difficulties in modifying densely packed membrane systems such as thin fibres in capillary modules as well as the reluctance of membrane manufacturers to implement the surface activation step into the membrane production line.