Nowadays problems such as insufficient rural residents’ participation and homogeneous design in the unified construction mode of rural housing in the north China plain mean that residents are increasingly unable to obtain satisfactory housing. The objective of this paper is to provide a shape grammar-based method which can analyze the design vocabularies and generate new solutions to rural housing. Based on a field survey of 56 villages in Shandong Province is located on the North China Plain, the elements of the shape and layout of traditional housing and well-off housing were summarized, and dwelling rules (Stage 1) and room rules (Stage 2) were defined. After that, the rules with the demands of rural residents (derived from Chinese rural family life cycle model and the rural resident types of China) were matched to define transformation rules (Stage 3). Finally, the operability and rationality of this method were verified, with the finding that shape grammar can effectively solve the problem of matching customized mass housing design with differentiated demands from users.