To fabricate a tunable optical filter with a fast response in the near infrared region, a tunable guided-mode resonance (GMR) filter using graphene was proposed and its performance was optimized. In this study, a rigorous coupled wave analysis method was employed to systematically investigate the effects of geometrical configuration of graphene-integrated GMR filters and the optical properties of constituent materials including graphene on their spectral response in terms of tunability and extinction ratio. It was found that as the graphene is located close to the waveguide and the evanescent-field strength at the interface increases, the GMR filter exhibits better tunability. The bandwidth of the filter could be drastically reduced by adopting a low-index contrast grating layer, so that the extinction ratio of an optical signal could be greatly improved from 0.91 dB to 27.99 dB as the index contrast decreased from 0.99 to 0.47, respectively. Furthermore, new practical device designs, that is easy to fabricate and effectively implement the electric-field doping of graphene at low gate voltage, were also suggested and theoretically validated. These results demonstrate not only the excellent potential of a graphene-based tunable GMR filter but also provide practical design guidelines for optimizing the device performance.