A facile and large-scale synthesis method to fabricate silver hollow microspheres with controllable morphologies and shell thickness is described using low-cost glass microspheres as templates. The method mainly involves two steps of the preparation of silver-coated glass microsphere core–shell particles by a controllable liquid reduced reaction of Ag[(NH3)2]+ solution, which only produces silver nanoparticles anchored on the surface of the thiolated glass microsphere templates, and the removal of glass microspheres by wet chemical etching with HF solution. The products are well characterized by field emitted scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmitted electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) etc. The as-prepared core-shell particles and hollow particles have even and compact silver shells. The electromagnetic shielding coatings based on the silver hollow microspheres are demonstrated to have high conductivity, excellent shielding effectiveness and long durability, suggesting that the silver hollow microspheres obtained here are a novel light-weight electromagnetic shielding filler and will have extensive applications in the electromagnetic compatibility fields.