The purpose of this paper was to investigate formaldehyde emission behavior of building materials from on-site measurements of air phase concentration at material surface used as input data of a box model to estimate the indoor air pollution of a newly built classroom. The relevance of this approach was explored using CFD modeling. In this box model, the contribution of building materials to indoor air pollution was estimated with two parameters: the convective mass transfer coefficient in the material/air boundary layer and the on-site measurements of gas phase concentration at material surfaces. An experimental method based on an emission test chamber was developed to quantify this convective mass transfer coefficient. The on-site measurement of gas phase concentration at material surface was measured by coupling a home-made sampler to SPME. First results had shown an accurate estimation of indoor formaldehyde concentration in this classroom by using a simple box model. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.