The work aims to interpret the development paths and strategic methodological applications of elderly-friendly design and reform research in China by combining quantitative and qualitative research methods. CiteSpace and NVivo, based on bibliometric methods and rooting theory, were adopted to carry out volume statistics, Keywordco-occurrence, clustering analysis, and literature coding analysis for the literature on elderly-friendly design and reform in Chinese journals from 2003 to 2022. The quantitative analysis showed that the research on elderly-friendly design and reform in China was in a vigorous development stage, and the research hotspots included home-based care for the elderly, aging, spatial design, elderly care architecture, public facilities, and digital divide, forming five main development paths. The qualitative analysis showed that the elderly-friendly design and reform strategies in China could be categorised into five parts of basic research, basic design, advanced design, auxiliary research and external optimization. The research on elderly-friendly design and reform in China currently has high research intensity in the field of design. The research themes gradually show interdisciplinary and diversified trends, which are in line with the development trend of deep integration of digital economy and real economy in China. Researchers will get more help to output high-quality elderly-friendly solutions by applying elderly-friendly design and reform strategies.