•Synthesis of undoped and Eu and Tb-doped and Eu–Tb co-doped Strontium Molybdate (SMO) by co-precipitation method.•Characterization of the samples by XRD, SEM and DLS for particle size.•Observation of orange-red emission and blue-green emission from the Eu-doped and Tb-doped samples, respectively.•Optimization of the dopant ion concentration for white light emission from the co-doped sample.•Observation of cool day light white light emission with CCT 6863K from the co-doped system (Eu-0.5mol% and Tb-1mol%). Nano ceramics of undoped and Eu and Tb-doped strontium molybdate (SMO) were synthesized via co-precipitation route and characterized by XRD, SEM and DLS techniques. It was observed that the average particle size for the samples was 90nm. A bluish emission attributed to the tetrahedral molybdate moiety was observed for the undoped system. The single-doped sample Eu3+:SMO gave orange-red emission, whereas the Tb3+:SMO sample showed blue-green emission. From the emission data, the site symmetry of the ions was estimated. Based on the emission data of single-doped samples, the co-dopant ions concentrations were tuned to extract white light emission from the system. It was observed that when doped with 0.5mol% Eu3+ and 1mol% Tb3+ and excited with 230nm, the system gave a ‘cool day light’ white light emission with a correlated color temperature (CCT) 6863K.