Abstract Promoting energy efficiency improvements of residential buildings is considered to play an important role in achieving the Kyoto targets. That is because it allows us to reduce energy consumption without curtailing social welfare. It is worth noting that there is an increasing amount of literature on this topic that has been published in recent years. This paper therefore provides an updated review of the literature on improving the energy performance of residential buildings. The set of materials obtained has been examined according to the following topics: area of application and design variables, objectives and performance measures, type of analysis, solution methodology, software tools, case study location and type of building. Apart from trends related to the different topics, opportunities for future research are also presented.