House music has many sub-divisions:
- Acid house: A Chicago derivative built around the Roland TB-303 bassline machine. Hard, uncompromising, tweaking samples produce a hypnotic effect. ex: Adonis, L.A. Williams
- Afro house: A South African form of house which developed out of Kwaito. Closely resembles Deep house but often features African loops and instruments. Artists include Revolution and Oskido.
- Ambient house (see ambient music): Mixing the moody atmospheric sounds of New Age and ambient music with pulsating house beats.
- Chicago house: Simple basslines, driving four-on-the-floor percussion and textured keyboard lines are the elements of the original house sound. ex: Larry Heard, Steve Poindexter
- Deep house: A slower variant of house (around 120 BPM) with warm sometimes hypnotic melodies. ex: Gemini, Glenn Underground, Kevin Yost.
- Disco house: A more upfront variant of house that relies heavily on looped disco samples. ex: DJ Sneak, Paul Johnson, and Stardust.
- Electro house: Sometimes resembles tech house, but often influenced by the "electro" sound of the early 1980's, aka breakdancing music, via samples or just synthesizer usage. ex: Green Velvet
- Epic house: A variant of progressive house featuring lush synth-fills and dramatic (some would say the legendary Shep Pettibone and Tony Humphries at Zanzibar in Newark, NJ. Not to be confused with speed garage or the British style nowadays called UKG pronounced "garridje". See garage.
- Freestyle house: A Latin variant of NY house music, which began development in the early 1980s by producers like John Jellybean Benitez. Seen by some as an evolution of electro funk.
- French house: A late 1990s house sound developed in France. Inspired by the '70s and '80s funk and disco sounds. Mostly features a typical sound "filter" effect. ex: Daft Punk, Alan Braxe, Le Knight Club
- Funky house: Funky house as it sounds today first started to develop during the late 1990's. It can again be sub-divided into many other types of house music. French house, Italian house, Disco house, Latin house and many other types of house have all contributed greatly to what is today known as Funky house. It is recognizable by it's often very catchy bassline, swooshes, swirlls and other synthesized sounds which give the music a bouncy tempo. It often relies heavily on black female vocals or disco samples and has a recognizable tiered structure in which every track has more than one build-up which usually reaches a climax before the process is repeated with the next track. ex: Derrick Carter, Axwell, Seamus Haji and ATFC to name but a few.
- Garage: This term has changed meaning several times over the years. The UK definition relates to New York's version of deep house, originally named after a certain style of soulful disco played at legendary club the Paradise Garage, although the original Garage sound was much more of an eclectic mix of many different kinds of records. The UK version is pronounced "ga-ridge". May also be called the Jersey Sound due to the close connection many of its artists and producers have with New Jersey such as unds. The style was generally fast tempo.
- Ghetto house: A dirivative of Chicago House with TR-808 and 909 driven drum tracks. Usually contains call-and-response lyrics, similar to the Booty Music of Florida. ex: DJ Deeon, DJ Milton, DJ Funk, DJ D-Man
- Hard house: a harder, more aggressive form of Chicago House. Sometimes contains elements of Ghetto House, Hip House. ex: CZR, DJ Bam Bam, Abstract Beating System
- Hi-NRG: Called "high energy". Derived from Dance music and Happy hardcore, you could say what happyhard is to techno, is what HI-NRG is to dance, it usually has female voices with natural pitch, its tempo is also around the same as techno, eg: DJ Nick Skitz.
- Hip house: The simple fusion of rap with house beats. Popular for a brief moment in the late 80s. Most famous record is Jungle Brothers "Girl I'll House You."
- Italo house: Slick production techniques, catchy melodies, rousing piano lines and American vocal styling typifies the Italian ("Italo") house sound. A modulating Giorgio Moroder style bassline is also a trademark of this style.
- Kwaito: House music that originated in Johannesburg, South Africa in the mid 90's. It is characterised by slow beats, accompanied by (mostly male) vocals - often shouted and not sung - set against melodic African loops.
- Latin house: Borrows heavily from Latin dance music -- Salsa, Brazilian beats, Latin Jazz, etc.
- Merenhouse
- Microhouse: (or Minimal House) A dirivative of Tech House with sparse composition and production. ex: Akufen, Todd Sines, Alton Miller
- New York house: New York's uptempo dance music, referred to simply as club music by some.
- Progressive house: Progressive house is typified by accelerating peaks and troughs throughout a track's duration, and are, in general, less obvious than in hard house. Layering different sound on top of each other and slowly bringing them in and out of the mix is a key idea behind the progressive movement. Some of this kind of Dance Musics like a cousin of trance music.
- Tech house: House music with elements of techno in its arrangement and instrumentation. ex: Rino Cerrone, Dave Angel
- Track house: A drum-oriented variant of Chicago house built around compact drum machines of the late '80s and early '90s. ex: Trackhead Steve, DJ Rush, Paul Johnson
- Tribal house: Popularized by remixer/DJ Junior Vasquez in New York, characterized by lots of percussion and world music rhythms.