In cold spraying, bonding is associated with shear instabilities caused by high strain rate deformation during impact. It is well known, that bonding occurs, when the impact velocity of an impacting particle exceeds a critical value. This critical velocity depends not only on the type of spray material, but also on the powder quality, the particle size and the particle impact temperature. Up to now, optimization of cold spraying mainly focused on increasing the particle velocity. The new approach presented in this contribution demonstrates capabilities to reduce critical velocities by well-tuned powder sizes and particle impact temperatures. Calculations and experimental methods were used to find optimum particle impact conditions for an optimized particle size distribution. Finite element simulations and analytical calculations were performed to develop a generalized description of these effects. A newly designed temperature control unit was implemented to a cold spray system and various spray experiments with different powder size cuts were performed to verify results from calculations. Microstructures and mechanical strength of coatings demonstrate that coating quality can be significantly improved by using well-tuned powder sizes and higher process gas temperatures. The generalized model, verified for copper as an example, can be transferred to a variety of spray materials and thus should boost the development of the cold spray technology with respect to coating quality.