Saturated pool boiling heat transfer of water is investigated experimentally on copper surfaces with nanoparticle coatings at atmospheric pressure. The coatings are generated by an electrophoretic deposition method (EPD). Three modified surfaces are prepared with gold nanoparticles of 0.20 mg, 0.25 mg and 0.30 mg, respectively. During the deposition, ethanol works as the solvent while the electrical potential and deposition time are controlled as 9.5 V and 30 min, respectively. The experimental results show that heat transfer coefficients (HTC) and critical heat fluxes (CHF) are enhanced on the modified surfaces. HTC increases with decreasing thickness of the coating, while CHF increases with increasing thickness of the coating. CHFs of EPD-0.20 mg, EPD-0.25 mg and EPD-0.30 mg are 93 W/cm2, 123 W/cm2 and 142 W/cm2, respectively, which are increased by 7%, 41% and 63% compared with the smooth surface. EPD-0.20 mg performs the best on heat transfer, with a maximum enhancement of around 60%. At the end, a brief review about mechanistic models of heat transfer at low and moderate heat fluxes is provided, based on which, the reasons why heat transfer is enhanced are discussed.