Sunken Bath Design Ideas: Luxury Bathroom Trend 2025

Noted and admired of late: sunken baths. Below, seven alluring examples of bathtubs that skim the floor for a look that is at once modern and classic (think Roman baths). Some are deep cuts from our archives, others newly spotted.

Won’t you step right down?

Above: At a guesthouse in Algarve, Portugal, a combination shower-tub is clad in handmade matte white porcelain tiles. The brass shower fixtures are from
Bruma; shown here is the 
Elite Brass Shower Head. Photograph by Alex Reyto for the Perfect Hideaway, courtesy of Casa Modesta, from
Casa Modesta: A Family House Turned Rural Retreat in Portugal’s Algarve.
Above: The step-down bath in the home of one of our favorite architects, Pat Bernatz. It’s lined in granite sourced from
Coldspring. To get a better sense of how it’s used, head over to his Instagram for an
enticing clip. Photograph by Yoshihiro Makino, courtesy of Bernatz Studio, from
Before & After: Architect Pat Bernatz’s Reimagined House on the Hill in East LA.
Above: Michaela Scherrer’s tiny spa bath made an appearance in our first book, 2016’s
Remodelista: A Manual for the Considered Home, and we’re still thinking about it. You can read more about the space
here. Photograph by Matthew Williams, styling by Alexa Hotz, for Remodelista.
Above: From Hutch Design’s website: “The watchword for The Makers Barn is flow. Using clear sightlines and half-walls to offer glimpses between rooms, there’s a translucency to this single-storey space that makes it feel modest, low maintenance, and one with the landscape. A concrete shower is carved beneath a pocket of sky to simulate natural rainfall, and a brushed brass spout pours water into a sunken bath, which feels a little bit like the barn’s own hot spring.” Photograph by Helen Cathcart, styling by Sarah Birks.
Above: For a remodel of a bungalow in Amangasett, NY, architecture firm General Assembly made clever design decisions to take advantage of every inch of its compact footprint, including adding a sunken bath once they discovered thee home had a crawl space. The bath is lined with tile from Heath. Photograph by William Jess Laird