Abstract: Superhydrophobic materials have been received extensive attention due to their unique properties and wide applications. In this work, two kinds of superhydrophobic coatings were successfully fabricated with magnesium oxysulfate whiskers (MOSWs) and nano-silica. Firstly, surface modifications for MOSWs and nano-silica (with size of 50 nm and 500 nm) were carried out to reduce their surface energy. Then, surface roughness was constructed by mixing MOSWs and nano-silica based on a mixture design approach, which was studied using contact angle, sliding angle and average roughness (R_a) as response variables to illustrate causality among morphology, size and mixing ratio. Furthermore, the adhesive property of superhydrophobic coatings to water droplets was illustrated. The influences of roughness on superhydrophobic properties were investigated in detail. Based on the obtained results, superhydrophobic coatings with different adhesive properties were fabricated. The results show that the high adhesive superhydrophobic coating can be obtained using MOSWs as the raw material, whose contact angle is about 152.59°, and water droplets do not drip when the coating is turned upside down. The low adhesive superhydrophobic coating can be prepared by mixing MOSWs and 50 nm silica with the same mass fraction, whose contact angle and sliding angle are about 163.25° and 0°, respectively. Importantly, the excellent properties can be obtained for the low adhesive coating, when the average roughness (R_a) is between 5-10 μm.