Air pollution, glare, solar radiation and heat gain are undesirable environmental conditions that negatively affect human health, building performance and energy consumption as well. Due to their extraordinary benefits, the Smart materials are globally developed and applied at various fields, particularly at architecture. This paper discusses the effect of incorporating the property-changing smart materials within building envelope on enhancing building reactions and energy consumption as well. In this work, the smart materials were firstly defined; then, property-changing smart materials that are able to enhance building reactions toward the undesirable environmental conditions were categorized to: phase-change materials for regulating the temperature, adhesion-changing materials for purifying the air and color-changing materials for controlling the temperature and natural lighting. These categories analyzed based on the type of influential stimulus on each category, the material reaction towards the surrounding environment, the function effect of the material, the available products as well as examples of the practical applications for each category. The study outcomes demonstrated that embedding property-changing smart materials within building envelope is able to achieve thermal and visual comfort, health care and energy saving as well, and they present a feasible substitute for conventional materials.