Abstract: Conventional design of steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) assumes that 100% of the story shear is resisted by each infill panel, and the contribution of boundary frame is neglected. However, analysis results show that if the moment-resisting frame is used as boundary frame, whose contribution can not be neglected. Plastic collapse mechanisms of SPSWs subjected to lateral loads and design methods of SPSWs with moment-resisting frame were investigated in this paper. The design equation of vertical boundary elements (VBE) considering axial force was derived through mechanical analysis of horizontal boundary elements (HBE) and VBEs, and the shear distribution equation between infill panel and boundary frame was then determined. The feasibility of shear distribution equation was verified through the analysis of several one story, one bay SPSWs structures. Two 9-story SPSWs structures were designed separately by the conventional design method and the proposed design method considering boundary frame. Seismic performances were then evaluated by nonlinear time history method. For both designs, the maximum average story drifts of structures meet the requirements of Chinese seismic code, indicating the effectiveness of the proposed method. For the design using the proposed method, the total weight of steel is reduced by 6.48% compared with the conventional design, indicating the proposed procedure is more economic.