Green building rating systems define a set of standards that seek to mitigate the negative environmental impact of buildings by promoting sustainability in the construction industry. Although these systems successfully answer the "Why" and "What" in regard to green building design (i.e., the environmental effects and the proposed sustainable design principles), the "How" has yet to be addressed. This paper aims to advance existing green building practices by introducing a systematic criteria-based ranking of green building design factors (GBDFs) that help construction practitioners reach sustainability goals (i.e., answer the "How") by identifying the most influential factors to consider during the design process. The proposed research process begins with identifying a set of criteria and sub-criteria through an extensive review of leading green building rating systems. GBDFs are then cross-referenced with the governing sub criteria in order to define distinct research areas for a pair-wise (sub-criterion, GBDF) evaluation process performed in accordance with the frequency of relevant publications. As a result, a criteria-based ranking of GBDFs is established, which, in addition to presenting an important step toward achieving a systematic framework for the implementation of green building principles, further improves existing rating systems by capturing the full impact of GBDFs in reference to their respective ranking scores. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.