The influence of surface roughness on the tribological performance, i.e. friction, wear and material pick-up tendency, of two different commercial PVD coatings, TiN and WC/C, in sliding contact with ball bearing steel has been evaluated using two different types of sliding wear laboratory tests. Post-test characterisation using SEM/EDS, AES, ToF-SIMS and XPS was used to evaluate the prevailing friction and wear. The results show that the surface roughness of the coating is of importance in order to control the initial material pick-up tendency and thus the friction characteristics in a sliding contact. Once initiated, the material pick-up tendency will increase, generating a tribofilm at the sliding interface. For steel–TiN sliding couples a FeO-based tribofilm is generated on the two surfaces and FeO/FeO becomes the sliding interface (interfilm sliding) resulting in a high friction coefficient. For steel–WC/C sliding couples the WC/C displays a pronounced running-in behaviour which generates a WO3-based tribofilm on the steel surface while a carbon rich surface layer is formed on the WC/C surface, i.e. WO3/C becomes the sliding interface (interface sliding) resulting in a low friction coefficient.