An experimental study on impaction of a single drop on solid surfaces was conducted to show the effects of particles on the impact process. The parameters were: volume fraction of particles (0 to 0.3), particle size (0.47 to 250 micron), and ratio of particle size to drop size (0.00017 to 0.074). The effect of particle volume fraction on the spreading process depended on impact speed and substrate. At low impact speed, particles had little effect on the spreading except for surfaces where the equilibrium contact angle was low. For high impact speed, the influence of particles on spreading can be described by the effective viscosity. The effect of particle size on the spreading process also depended on impact speed and substrate. At low impact speed, the drop did not have enough kinetic energy to overcome the energy barrier associated with the large particles. For particle-laden liquids, retraction was affected by particle parameters. When pure liquid drops retracted from the maximum spreading ratio, the retraction appeared to be symmetric around the point of impaction while retraction of the particle-laden drop was sometimes asymmetric. Rebounding on the Teflon film depended on impact speed, particle volume fraction, and particle size. The impact speed must reach a critical value for rebounding to occur. Bouncing results suggested that the probability of bouncing decreased as viscosity increased, impact speed increased, and surface tension decreased. The non-wetting behavior and bouncing probably involved an air layer between the surface and the drop. When a low-velocity liquid drop impacts on a surface, ejection of a secondary drop from the top of the impacting drop was sometimes observed. When Renardy et al.'s (2003) criterion for the range of velocities for existence of a capillary wave was applied to for a 3.2-mm water drop; the range was between 0.2 to 1.5 m/s. However, drop ejection was observed at lower impact speed. When apparent viscosity of the particle-laden liquid obtained from Krieger's equation (1972) was used in the pure liquid models for predicting the maximum spreading ratio, good agreement between model predictions and experimental results was obtained when Park et al's model (2003) was used.