Since their discovery, Graphene-based materials, i.e. graphene nanoflakes (GFs), graphene oxide (GO) or reduced GO (rGO), and graphene films produced by chemical vapour deposition (CVD-G), have been a new class of carbon nanomaterials that attracted substantial research interest. Graphene-based coatings like CVD-G (being transferred to a substrate) and a modified GFs or GO that deposited on a substrate by solvent-assisted method exhibited excellent antibacterial activity and extracellular matrix character due to its unique morphology, microstructure, and physicochemical cues to enable cell attachment, proliferation, and differentiation. Over the past decade, studies have increasingly reported on the bioactive graphene-based coatings that showed great potential for the cell culture, cell-growth, tissue engineering scaffold, and biomedical devices. In this review, we summarize recent great advances of antibacterial graphene-based coatings in view of composition and fabrication methods. In addition, mammalian cell behaviors on 2D graphene-based coatings and 3D scaffolds for tissue engineering and implants are compiles as well. Future perspectives and emerging challenges are also highlighted.