The hydrophilic/hydrophobic nature of the cellulose could be tuned by introducing a polymer layer onto the surface using surface initiated polymerization techniques. Initiating groups for the polymerization could be immobilized by reacting 2-bromoisobutyrylbromide with the hydroxyl groups on cellulose. Thereafter, using atom transfer radical polymerization the modified cellulose was grafted with hydrophobic poly(methyl acrylate) (PMA), or with poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) (PNIPAAm) which have been known for having lower critical solution temperature. We characterized the modified surface of cellulose using SEM-EDS and XPS, and FT-IR. The contact angles of the polymer grafted cellulose showed that the hydrophilic nature of cellulose surface was changed to hydrophobic after being grafted with PMA and to temperature dependent hydrophilic/hydrophobic with PNIPAAm.