Bigger grains prior to cold rolling are favorable to the magnetic properties of non-oriented electrical steels. However, it is hard to coarsen grains in hot rolled sheets of low silicon steels due to γ→α transformation. In the work, the influences of different hot rolling temperatures (820 °C, 840 °C and 875 °C) and coiling temperatures (680 °C and 750 °C) on the microstructural and textural evolution of 1.6 wt% Si steel were comparatively investigated in detail. The mechanism of grain growth during coiling was investigated using a quasi in-situ electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) technique. The main finding was that pancake grains with an aspect ratio of 1.5–3.5 formed after hot rolling at 840 °C and further significantly grew after coiling at higher temperature 750 °C through a strain induced boundary migration mechanism. However, the significant grain growth did not occur after coiling at low temperature of 680 °C. By contrast, elongated deformed grains and equiaxed grains were produced after finish rolling at 820 °C and 875 °C, respectively, in which pronounced grain growth was not observed even after coiling at 750 °C. The significant grain growth promoted the formation of shear bands during cold rolling and led to weakened γ-fiber (<111 >//ND) texture, enhanced λ-fiber (<100 >//ND) and big grains in the annealed sheet. As a result, both magnetic induction and iron loss were significantly improved. This work provides a promising method to coarsen grains before cold rolling by design hot rolling process for low silicon non-oriented silicon steels.