Heat transfer across envelopes (facde, roof, glazed areas) represents a big share of the energy flow within the heat balance of buildings. This paper focuses on areas of the envelope where multi-dimensional heat transfer occurs. These areas are commonly defined as thermal bridges, due to a localized reduction of thermal resistance of constructions in these places. This paper reviews common standardized methods to assess heat transfer in buildings, under various modelling assumptions: one-dimensional, multi-dimensional, steady state and dynamic. Within presently developed modelling and assessment methods, a need for improvement has been identified over existing methods for the thermal assessment of multi-dimensional heat transfer under dynamic conditions. A phasorial approach to differential heat transfer in thermal bridges has been developed, which serves as the dynamic extension of steady-state thermal bridge coefficients. This formulation is applied to the junction of a masonry wall with a concrete slab. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.