In this work, we set out to develop the basis for the development of chemically specific surface interactions for dissipative particle dynamics simulation. We compared explicit droplet simulations with independent computations of the contact angle from the Young equation, using separate measurements of the interfacial tension and surface energies, finding good agreement. We then demonstrated how our model can be used to parametrise a SAM-covered silica surface to obtain a given contact angle for a water droplet in dodecane sitting on the surface. Fig. is the key result here, since it shows how to choose the wall interaction parameters to obtain a specified contact angle in this particular system, but obviously the method can be applied to other systems. Our results show that surfaces can be easily and rapidly parametrised via the surface energies, which are computable with a relatively trivial extension of the pressure tensor method for computing the interfacial tension between liquids. Realistic surfaces can be modelled by tuning the interactions between DPD beads and the wall, using experimental contact angles as a benchmark, without having to undertake expensive explicit droplet simulations for calibration. We have focussed on flat, structureless surfaces but in principle the methods can be extended to structured surfaces, although the computation of the surface energies becomes complicated if one has to implement a 'phantom wall' and lift it off the surface, in a thermodynamic integration step. We now outline a number of avenues for future work. To continue in the above direction, we have started to explore how density functional theory (DFT) may be used to compute the surface energies and density profiles within our wall models, which would obviate the need to undertake any simulations at all. One interesting result of this is that with a simple mean-field DFT, one can devise a wall potential for which the water model (as a fluid of DPD water beads at a specified density) is predicted to be completely structureless away from the wall, or in other words have a flat density profile. We further find that the required wall potential can be interpreted as corresponding to a 'DPD continuum' made from DPD water beads at the bulk water bead density, in the z < 0 half space. This provides a theoretical justification for the approach of Goicochea and Alarcón, who first developed this concept. Additionally, not investigated in the present work, one can ask how the individual molecular groups are distributed in the vicinity of the wall. For example, one might expect that for the pure oil, the terminal -CH 3 beads in our dodecane model could be preferentially located at the wall, on purely entropic grounds. Microscopically, the local structure can be controlled to some extent by adjusting the individual DPD bead wall interactions. In the present work, for simplicity we did not distinguish between the two hydrocarbon bead types in this respect, but in future works these could be fine-tuned to reproduce the molecular density profiles in greater detail.