Adsorption of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which are a class of air pollutants affecting the environment and human health is considered as the favourable technology for enrichment, separation and utilization of VOCs. In the present work, the adsorption properties of air polluting carbocyclic and heterocyclic VOCs such as toluene, p-xylene and indole onto pristine/defected nanographene (with and without dopants) are investigated using density functional theory (DFT). Adsorption of indole is higher (-0.544 to -1.786 eV) in pristine/defected nanographene (with and without dopant) than p-xylene and toluene. The reactivity of defect on adsorption of VOCs is found high for indole with defected nanographene (DG) and toluene with DG-N indicating the influence of sheet type for adsorption rely on the type of the VOCs adsorbate. The charge transfer and type of interaction between the sheet and VOCs are interpreted using Hirshfeld charge analysis, QTAIM and RDG analysis. The influence of VOCs adsorption is high on the electronegativity and electrophilicity index of the pristine/defected nanographene whereas energy gap and hardness show less influence. The noticeable changes in the TDOS and energy gap on adsorption of VOCs with respect to the type of sheet infers that the doped defected sheet have high affinity than the pristine sheet moreover, the suitable sheet for adsorption of VOCs depends on the type of VOCs adsorbate.