Nanofiltration contributes to water softening by the exclusion of multi-valent hardness ions, through size exclusion mechanisms. Hardness reduction can be enhanced by the addition of positive charges to the selective layer, to take advantage of repulsive electrostatic interactions. However, there are two common drawbacks to this approach: the alteration of the permeability/selectivity trade-off and the increased fouling propensity of positively charged membranes towards negatively charged organic foulants, which should be overcome for effective membrane utilization. To overcome this, positively charged aminated carbon quantum dots (CQDs) were incorporated into a positively charged selective layer to maintain selectivity against metal cations. CQDs incorporation improved membrane hydrophilicity, affected pore size distribution and molecular weight cut-off and smoothed the surface of the selective layer. As a result, membrane permeance increased by 2.3 times, up to 12 l/(m