Abstract In this study, a storm event-based frequency analysis method was proposed to mitigate the limitations of conventional rainfall depth–duration–frequency (DDF) analysis. The proposed method takes the number, rainfall depth, and duration of rainstorm events into consideration and is advantageous in estimation of more realistic rainfall quantiles for a given return period. For the purpose of hydraulics design, the rainfall depth thresholds are incorporated to retrieve the rainstorm events for estimating design rainfalls. The proposed method was tested against the observed rainfall data from 1961 to 2010 at Seoul, Korea and the computed rainfall quantiles were compared with those estimated using the conventional frequency analysis method. The study results indicated that the conventional method was likely to overestimate the rainfall quantiles for short rainfall durations. It represented that the conventional method could reflect rainfall characteristics of actual rainstorm events if longer durations (like 24 hours) were considered for estimation of design rainfalls.