20 Gorgeous Examples of Sunken Living Rooms

Your living room is a central room in your home. For many, it’s the gathering place for relaxing and visiting with family and friends, watching TV, or curling up with a good book. Living rooms come in a wide variety of designs, shapes and sizes, with one design being the familiar look of a sunken design. Sunken living rooms are spaces that are designed to sit below the rest of the floor level. Digs Digs describes the sunken living room as having hit it’s height of popularity in the mid-20th century, but it is making a comeback today, only now, with more modern twists and interesting design elements. For a lot of homeowners, the sunken living room is one look you either love or you don’t. If you love the idea of having a sunken living space and looking for more info on this style of living room, read on to learn about these cool, relaxing spaces that can add a whole new dimension to your home.

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Sunken living room with an open floor plan

Sunken living rooms can really make a statement when designed as a part of an open floor plan. To have a sunken living room set off a kitchen can really add an interesting flow and gives a definite separation between the two areas as opposed to having some of the typical separating elements, such as a wall, columns, or counter and cupboard area. There are plenty of ways to add even more character to the sunken living area off the kitchen, for instance, Digs Digs has a great idea of accentuating the border of the sunken space with wood or stone to really make it pop! This is an especially beautiful element to add in a modern or rustic style home, but of course, could work with many decor styles.

Create a conversation pit sunken living room

Not all sunken living room areas have to be large spaces or even a traditional size and shaped space. If you’re looking for something a little more unique than just a typical sunken living room, think about designing a sunken area that replicates something more of a quaint, conversation pit. A sunken living room like this works great in a large open space where in the midst of all the room, a circular sunken pit seems to suddenly pop into the picture. As pictured above, neutral toned, two curved sofas line the outer wall of the circular design and intimately face each other, making for the perfect conversational gathering hot-spot. A matching textured ottoman/coffee table sits in the middle to complete the space. Although conversation pits were seen in the early 20th century, it’s the 70’s era when conversation pits were known to really have taken off, according to Apartment Therapy, but today’s version is definitely way cooler, and much more magnificent than those of the 70’s.

Choose furniture pieces to fit the size and shape of your sunken space

Because sunken living rooms are designed in an array of sizes and shapes, one of the challenges can be decorating it and finding furniture pieces to fit it without making it look awkward. Circular sunken living rooms, or conversation pits, are the hardest to outfit and may need custom ordered pieces, like sofas or bench seats, to fit perfectly along the perimeter. Many sunken living rooms are designed with more than one area of steps leading up to the main level, so large furniture pieces can block some or most of some steps, making the space look awkward and off kilter. Keep furniture scaled to size and congruent with the cutout of the space as well.

Pros and Cons of sunken living rooms

If you don’t already have a sunken living room but would love one in your home, the only real way to achieve that is to purchase a home that already has one, or have one included in the architectural design of a home you’re building. If you plan to do either, there are a few things you may want to consider before making the move. We’ve discovered a few Pros and Cons of sunken living rooms, explained in detail at Bob Vila, and here’s what we found:

Pros:

They gives the look and feel of a larger room with the extra overhead space over the lower, sunken living area
Creates a beautiful focal point for the room by immediately drawing attention to the step-down, sunken area
Smaller sized conversation pit-styled sunken living rooms bring a sense of warmth and coziness to your open floor plan

Cons:

Sunken living rooms can be a bit hard to decorate or buy furniture pieces that fit due to the size or shape
The steps can be a hazard for some people, especially those with mobility issues. Most sunken living areas aren’t designed with handrails, which means there are commonly trips and falls associated with sunken living rooms
Many sunken living rooms are set right in the middle of major living spaces where there’s heavy foot traffic, making going up and down the steps often can be tiresome and an inconvenience

You can see that there are good and negative points about sunken living rooms, but when you see how amazing they can look, you may just fall in love with this look and design in a home. Take a look at the following 20 gorgeous examples of sunken living rooms and see if you don’t agree.