Some old living room styles never die, they’re only going downhill for a while to move up again in other time. This happens to the sunken living room. Once, during the 60s, this style had its heyday.
Actually, the trend began in the 1920s, in the early modern style America. Then it’s still in the form of conversation pits, with its grandeur atmosphere, and belongs to the luxurious homes. Along the time, the pits faded.
Now sunken living rooms are on the rise again, and even the conversation pits are also has their own fans. Now of course the living room features come with much more updated features to match with the contemporary tastes.
If now you want to find a suitable sunken living room for the new house (or to update the existing one), here we pick some of the best for you. We hope you love them. Let’s check them out.
Table of Contents
1. Cozy Wood-dominated sunken living room Ideas
Before Bruce Goff built one for Adah Robinson, his teacher, the ideas of having a sunken living room in the house is naught. After 1927, the year he build the living room, this distinctive living room style got increasing lovers.
If at the time the style was limited to the early modern styles, now you can have a living room in a wide range of styles. If you love rustic wood-dominated living room, this sunken room for cozy chatting is one of the best ideas.
2. Sunken Room for Modern Tropical House
If you love to see vintage interior designs, your chances to meet sunken rooms is bigger when you look for them in houses with Art Deco styles. This style is particularly popular in the early 20 century up to the eve of World War II.
Unlike the often intricate and ‘heavy’ Art Deco style living room, the modern style often offer fresher and more joyful atmosphere. If the Art Deco style often offer conversation pits, the modern counterpart offer this pleasant sunken room –like this tropical sunken room.
3. Sunken Living Room, Industrial Style
We’ve mentioned, briefly, about conversation pits. Before the sunken living room in vogue, you have conversation pits. They’re depressed pit-like parts in the living rooms which then filled with couches (arranged in circle for easy chats) and tables.
Now you have the more contemporary sunken living rooms. The main difference from conversation pits is that they’re only sunken, not pit-like. Now, if you like to remodel or update your living room into an industrial, try this industrial living room idea.
4. Sunken Living Room for a Warm Ranch house
Sunken living rooms cannot be separated from the ranch houses. Because of the typical open floor plans and low ceilings styles, a way of making the rooms look higher is by sinking the floor, making it sunken room areas.
Along to create the visually higher effects, the sunken room also offer spacious atmosphere. You can feel both of the effects in this ranch house living room here. Without the sunken parts, the room will look low and cramped. With it, the room looks expansive and pleasant.
5. Open Modern Living Room with a Sunken Room Feature
A room with a sunken feature often gives you great or even grandeur feelings, mainly if it in a classic house. This probably generated by the room leveling in the room. They give you sense of importance, just like when you step or down a palace stairs.
In this example you also can feel the atmosphere as well. Not only injects those effects, the raise or down of sunken room area also offers gentle and elegant way to split the room with other areas. Like to have one of this style in your home?
6. Sunken Living Room, Vintage Ranch Living Room
To divide a room, you have several alternatives. For the more conventional approaches, you may use walls or room partitions. But if you have an open room layout like a ranch house, you probably should try a sunken room.
This is not on how to raise a floor question, but rather how to dig down the floor. When you have an already low ceiling like this ranch house, you alternative is to go down, to get the higher and spacious air. You can use the height differences as room partition like this picture.
7. Low Sunken Floor for an Elegant Living Room
All the way up to this list, you have seen deep enough sunken floor. But, actually, you don’t have to have sunken floor that deep. For an example, you may take a look at this picture. The depressed area of the living room is shallow –but it’s still counted as a sunken living room.
As we said before, you may divide a room area with the sunken room feature. No matter how shallow the sunken degree of the floor, you always can use it as an area marker. In this example, the shallow sunken area marks the living room area with the kitchen.
8. Simple Sunken Room, Country House Living Room
For a difficult-to-impress friend, you have to consider a sunken room. No matter how simple or ordinary your living space, you always can get the wow factor with the sunken feature. Just dig down a little, and your living room lights up like no
In this example you don’t need railing ideas, all you need a shallow pit inside the living room. Spread the rug and set the table. With all this wood-dominated living room, the other things you need are only big picture windows and a most reliable fireplace.
9. Circular Sunken Living Room for the More Intimate Moments
You’ve met some of the finest sunken room ideas, but all of them are in rectangular forms. Though most of sunken room are with the form factor, you also can have sunken room in almost any other forms, like the one in the circular form here.
Small circular sunken living room offers the more intimate moments. It helps to build closer relationships and warmer conversational ambience. Being small, shallow, and full of fluffy stuff, you also don’t have to worry about its safety.
10. Cozy Modern Lounge, Sunken Style
Some say that the sunken styles are really catching up after The Dick Van Dyke Show aired in the 60s. The trend then spread to all the USA and the world –and died down in the mid-70s just to rise again lately.
Now even the conversation pits are in a comeback as well. This contemporary version of the pit is shown here. You have no chairs like thee conventional designs, as all the parts are lined with thick padding. The color, violet, contrasts nicely with the enveloping large white-black open room.
11. Cozy Seaside Sunken Living Room Ideas
Now we move outside, as sunken rooms are not only for the interior of houses. As you see here, sunken seating areas are also good for outdoor uses. This rustic seaside sunken lounge idea testifies the idea.
Here you have a depressed patio, in rustic raw wood materials, overlooking a sandy beach. The combination of sunken feature, materials, and the red paddings guarantee a warm and pleasant moments to whoever sit on it.
12. Minimalist Modern White and Grey Sunken Seating Area
If your house sits in uneven terrain and, as a result, you have uneven floors, then you should consider to allocate a room for an awesome sunken room. You may use it as a conversation pit or just a regular living room.
In this list, we present you a modern minimalist sunken room. This room combine the recessed floor with neutral colors. The combination of grey, white, and wood colors create a soft warm atmosphere which surely wants to always nice time on it.
13. Eclectic Sunken Room in Contemporary Style
Want to remodel or update the living room? You have several alternative of trending living room designs, including this eclectic sunken living room. Being an eclectic means that you have wide range tastes for styles (any styles, not just in interior designs).
For example, you have this eclectic sunken room. The room is a combination of modern and contemporary styles. The sunken room itself contains some of the iconic modern styles like the reclining seat and stuffy couch. All are warmed with wood accents of the stairs.
14. The Miller House’s Conversation Pit
Talking about sunken room wouldn’t be complete without naming Miller House. In this house Eero Sarrinen designed one of the most iconic sunken room, the conversation pit, as you can see the picture here.
Though the living room has reached over a half century (in existence since 1957), it still feel updated and contemporary. Like the sunken room of the era, the living room floor plan is truly sunken, lined with comfortable couches with rustic stairs on one side.
15. Small Sunken Room in Rustic-Minimalist Style
Some of the floor of the sunken rooms listed here are carpeted, while the other are left bare. Talking about carpeting, the ‘classic’ sunken room (mainly conversation pits) are mostly carpeted.
The contemporary sunken room, in the other hands, are often left naked.
In this rustic minimalist living room, for example, the floor is let to retain its warm wood floor characters. But, that’s not a rigid rule. You can alwasy put carpet or rug on the floor. It’s your floor after all.
16. Luxurious Modern Seaside Sunken Living Room with Picture Window
Again, here you meet a seaside lounging place. But, not like the previous design, you have a regular sunken. Only this time the living room has a big picture window opens to the seaside –so you can enjoy the beach without having to be troubled by flying sands or naughty wind.
This luxurious sunken room promises you all the comfort, from the snug beefy couches up to the warm wooden floor. It also gives you contemporary metal-glass structure which should make your guest impressed.
17. A Simple Small Sunken Living Room Design
Sunken designs are flexible, you can put them on a small or large rooms. The designs, as we outlined before, also give you room for improvisations. Shallow or deep, a sunken room’s is always warm and inviting.
To enter the living room here, you need to go down a few stairs. But that’s no big problem, as the stairs are designed so that they look neatly integrated to the room, and also has complied with the safety measures.
The sunken space itself is not so big, but enough and comfortable as a place to hangout.
18. A Grandeur Circular Conversational Pit
Hoe to make an intimate conversation? Get go to a suitable room, or go into this circular conversation pit. And if the previous pits is too simple for you, this conversation pit idea should satisfy you.
Along with the regular sunken room, the conversation pits also still has fans. The design also available in various forms, they depend on your tastes. A circular pit, in a right place, can be intimate and grandeur at once –like the one in this example.
19. Modern Semi Industrial Living Room in Sunken Style
An open living room often present unexpected drawback, aside of its spacious air it gives. Sometimes the room looks monotone and you want something (or structures) which can spice up the room visually.
To do it, breaking the monotony, try to set a sunken room. This example gives you an illustration. This long and open modern room will be boring and monotone as it is. But, with the sunken room installed, it provides nice break for your visual.
20. Sunken Rustic Living Room in Simple Lines
You don’t have to have deep sunken room to make an impressive living room area. With a few steps down, you also can have a cool and elegant living room, like this one. It full of elegant lines in modern and classic touches.
Though only with several inches raise (or down, depends on your perspective), the height difference is enough to give you the needed feeling: the living room looks bigger with a feeling of spaciousness and an increased height or headroom.
21. Vintage Mid Century Sunken Room Ideas
How to raise a floor for a sunken structure? To have a sunken room, ideally, you need to purchase a home which already has the room feature. If you’re now building a home, if you want a sunken structure, you need to incorporate the structure now.
If you want to add or remodel a sunken room in a home renovation, that would be unwise. Because you don’t want to disturb the existing weight bearing structure. So, if you happen to see a chic vintage Mid style sunken living room on sale, grab it immediately. It’s worth it.
22. Contemporary Cottage Style Sunken Living Room with Vaulted Ceiling
You can combine the sunken feature of a room with vaulted ceiling to achieve the more maximum headroom (and to look fresher). You can use the approach for a long, open, but narrow room, the one you usually see in a modern cottage.
For an example, see the picture. Without the vaulted ceiling, the room looks low and depressing (even with sunken floor plans). The vaulted wood and floor structure are also the main factor in injecting the room with its warm ambience.
23. Sunken Living Room with Pool, Nordic Style
Use sunken living room to create visual interest or breaking the monotony of the interior or exterior layout. In the previous list, you’ve seen how sunken room can distract your eyes (in lovely ways) from monotony on the room.
Now the sunken room also works well for outdoor, making a pool looks fantastic and refreshing.
This happen by building a sunken room protruding onto the pool, making the room partially surrounded by the pool, separated only by glass wall. Like to remodel your pool with this sunken room idea?
Read More: 20++ Awesome Mid Century Modern TV Stand You Should Have This Year
Whether for small chat, intimate date, or just for hanging out, a sunken living room one of your best options so far. It’s private. It also provides a good visual interest and makes, aside of giving the room its spacious atmosphere.
That’s it. We hope you enjoy this listicle and you can get the clues or ideas we offered here. Lastly, have a good day.
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