Phosphor particles were introduced as a luminescent medium to improve the overall efficiency of dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). In the preparation process, TiO2 and the phosphor particles were mixed to make a photoelectrode with a bilayer (TiO2/mix), 3-layers (TiO2/mix/TiO2) and 4-layers (TiO2/mix/TiO2/mix) structure. The cell with the bilayered structure (TiO2/mix) after treating with a TiCl4 solution showed the highest light-to-electric energy conversion efficiency (8.78%), which was ~ 25.8% higher than that of a cell with a pure TiO2 layer under the same experimental conditions. The improvement in the energy conversion efficiency of the DSSCs was attributed to the phosphor enhancing incident light-harvesting via up- and down-conversion luminescence processes, resulting in an increase in the photocurrent.