Much care is being given for the issue of sustainable development in the last few years. Among these efforts, researchers are giving much interest to saving water resources, energy conservation and protecting environment from pollution resulting from the use of fossil fuel. The present study is an investigation for the effects of operational and design parameters on the performance of basin type passive solar stills. Two types of nanomaterials are used for enhancing still productivity. The materials tested are nano-ZnO and nano-TiO2. Besides, experiments are run on TiO2 particles and on a reference still with no materials added except saline water. This gave a chance to investigate the effect, on still productivity, of adding an energy absorbing material, the effect of having this material in a nanoform and a comparison between the performances of different materials. The parameters of ambient temperature, basin temperature, glass temperature and solar intensity are studied. A total productivity amounting to 1645ml, 1560ml and 1115ml was obtained per day from stills having nano-ZnO, nano-TiO2 or TiO2 particles (0.6 g/l), respectively. The still efficiency is calculated to be 34.93%, 48.87% and 51.53% when TiO2, TiO2 NPs and ZnO NPs are used, respectively. Thus, ZnO showed the best productivity, followed by TiO2 and finally by TiO2 particles.