In this paper, we propose a new single-shot three-dimensional (3D) measuring method based on quaternary grating projection. In traditional binary grating phase measuring profilometry (PMP), a multi-step or color fringe pattern are usually used to extract the sinusoidal fringes. In our proposed method, by using the DLP4500′s 2-bit gray coding mode, the grayscale is quaternary. The three non-zero grayscales cyclically arranged in equal width, and the fourth grey value is 0 which is not encoded in the fringe pattern but represents the shadow information in the deformed pattern, where a quaternary grating is encoded. When the DLP4500 projects the quaternary grating onto the measured object, the charge coupled device (CCD) captures the corresponding deformed pattern synchronously. Three frames of binary deformed patterns with 1/3 duty cycle and a relative displacement of 1/3 period can be decomposed by the segmentation algorithm proposed in this paper. Three sinusoidal deformed patterns with a 2π/3 shift-phase can be obtained by extracting the fundamental frequency of the three binary deformed patterns correspondingly, and the 3D shape of the object can be reconstructed by PMP. Experimental results show the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method. Because the DLP4500 only needs 2-bit coded grating for projection, the refresh rate of the projected grating is as high as 1428 Hz, which will have a broad application prospect in real time and fast online measurement.