AIM: To comprehensively investigate the relationship between outer retinal layer thickness and age in normal eyes. METHODS: One hundred normal eyes of 100 subjects who underwent spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) were included in this retrospective study. The distances between the external limiting membrane (ELM) line and the photoreceptor inner segment/outer segment (IS/OS) line (ELM-IS/OS), the IS/OS line and the cone outer segment tips (COST) line (IS/OS-COST), the COST line and the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) complex (COST-RPE) and the full retinal thickness (RT) were measured at the fovea and on four quarters. The relationship between thickness and age or sex was then analysed. CONCLUSION: In normal eyes, the RT thickness on the nasal quarter and the ELM-IS/OS thickness were significantly and negatively correlated with age. The IS/OS-COST and COST-RPE thicknesses were not significantly correlated with age or sex.