The building sector is one of the main contributors to environmental impacts in France. In 2007, tertiary buildings consumed 44% of final energy and were responsible for 23% of CO2 emission. In 2008, the construction sector generated almost 75% in weight of the waste produced. Ecodesign, which tends to integrate environmental aspects into product design and development, seems to be a promising approach to tackle such issues. In order to move towards ecodesign process, a toolbox is required. In 2002, more than 150 tools were identified. More recently, a literature review found 107 tools and techniques related to ecodesign. While focusing on the building sector, findings are similar. Indeed, 133 tools of different natures were reported by the IEA in 2004. In 2010, 389 tools dedicated to building performance simulations were available. However and despite the large amount of tools, their implementation seems to be scarce. Many reasons are usually cited; the late applicability in the design process limiting influence on sustainable decisions, the complexity, the level of expertise, and the availability of data. In this context a better understanding of users’ needs, e.g. designers, and tools performance are required. The objective of this paper is to identify barriers that limit the use of ecodesign tools in early phases of the building design process and identify opportunities to overcome such issues. The building design process was investigated and modeled through a literature review, a campaign of 19 interviews from 15 companies in the construction sector and 2 specific case-studies. The main barriers to the use of ecodesign tools were identified. 6 problematic usages situations concerning conscious design decisions were defined and 10 ecodesign tools were evaluated. Finally, the DSM Value Bucket tool, extracted from the Radical Innovation Design® approach, was implemented to simulate the tools’ usage coverage for each usage situation. Findings highlight misconception related to barriers. Indeed, after computation, accessibility to environmental data and complexity appear as insignificant. According to the results, the major opportunities of development concern the improvement of results interpretations while comparing several buildings architectures on one hand, and specific decision-making tools for building stakeholders on another hand. The extension to a larger range of tools and to SME’s takes part of perspectives to confirm our results.