Development of the new approaches for synthesis of luminescent semiconductor nanomaterials is of high demand. In this work, nano- and microstructures of zinc oxide were synthesized by the hydrothermal method to provide new insight onto the optimization of this material optical properties. The possibility of controlling the synthesized ZnO geometry and morphology using various surfactants during the synthesis was demonstrated. Further study of the structures obtained by PL spectroscopy made it possible to observe a correlation between the hydrothermal growth conditions and the obtained ZnO nanostructures optical properties. This property, together with the ability to control the structures geometry, opens up new possibilities for their application in nanophotonics, UV-VIS and white light sources.