This paper investigates the effects of downstream wall roughness on characteristics of separated and reattached turbulent flow downstream of a backward facing step. Detailed particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements were conducted over rough walls produced from sandpaper 36 and 24 grits and a reference smooth acrylic wall positioned downstream of a backward facing step, one after another. All the experiments were performed at the same Reynolds number of 7050 based on the step height, h and approach mean velocity, ratio of initial boundary layer thickness to step height of 2.2 and expansion ratio of 1.25. The results showed that wall roughness increased the mean reattachment length over the sandpaper 36 and 24 grits by 5 b% and 7 %, respectively, in comparison with the smooth wall value. However, the other mean flow properties within the recirculation region are nearly independent of wall roughness. Beyond 5 step heights from the reattachment point, wall roughness reduced the streamwise mean velocity in the region adjacent to the rough walls. Wall roughness significantly increased the levels of the Reynolds stresses in the recirculation and redevelopment regions. In spite of the higher Reynolds stresses observed over the rough walls compared with the smooth wall, the spatial coherence of turbulence structures embodied in the streamwise and wall-normal auto-correlation function is significantly reduced over the rough walls.