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Ambient house is a musical category founded in the late 1980s that is used to describe acid house featuring ambient music elements and atmospheres. Tracks in the ambient house genre typically feature four-on-the-floor beats, synth pads, and vocal samples integrated in an atmospheric style.^[1] Ambient house tracks generally lack a diatonic center and feature much atonality along with synthesized chords.

The ambient house movement began in the late 1980s largely due to the demand for post-rave "come-down" music. It was founded mainly by The Orb members Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty. They drew from many influences including Steve Reich, Brian Eno, reggae music, and 1970s psychedelic rock, including Pink Floyd. Inspired by the house music played by DJs such as Larry "Mr. Fingers" Heard, Paterson and Cauty began DJ-ing and composing experimental music. The Orb established the genre in 1989 as DJs at The Land of Oz, based at Heaven. After a recording session with John Peel later that year, The Orb released the twenty-minute "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld", which featured "bright, translucent sounds" and "tinkl[ing]" keyboards, as well as heavily sampling Minnie Riperton's "Lovin' You".^[2] Out of Paterson and Cauty's sessions at Trancentral studio, came Cauty and Bill Drummond's KLF album Chill Out (which featured no credit to Paterson^[2]). As possibly the first ambient house album, The Grove Dictionary of Music describes it as "a 1980s pop culture version of musique concrète".^[3] After splitting from The Orb, Cauty finished work on his own album Space, and Paterson's Orb went on to create the single "Little Fluffy Clouds" – both important works of ambient house. In 1991, The Orb released the album The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, featuring both of their previous singles. Combining Moog synthesizers with religious chorales and audio clips of the Apollo 11 rocket launch, The Orb popularized the "spacy" sound of ambient house.^[2]

While The KLF retired in 1992, The Orb released their most successful ambient house single "Blue Room", which peaked at #8 on the UK singles chart. At forty minutes, it was the longest single to reach the UK charts. An edited form of it appeared on The Orb album U.F.Orb later that year. U.F.Orb brought in dub influences as well into ambient house. In the years after the release of their live album, Live 93, The Orb largely abandoned the ambient house sound in favor of more "metallic" music.^[2]

Ambient house was taken up in large part by artists such as Juno Reactor, Pete Namlook, and Tetsu Inoue.

• The Orb - "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld" (1989/1990)
• Jimmy Cauty - Space (1990)
• The KLF - Chill Out (1990)
• Biosphere - Microgravity (1991)
• The Orb - Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (1991)
• The Orb - U.F.Orb (1992)
• The Irresistible Force - Flying High (1992)
• Juno Reactor - Transmissions (1993)
• Pete Namlook - Air (1993)
• Tetsu Inoue - Ambiant Otaku (1994)
• FFWD - FFWD (1994)

• List of electronic music genres

House
Acid - Ambient - Chicago - Dark - Deep - Dream - Electro - French - Garage - Ghetto - Hard - Hip - Italo - Latin - Minimal - Microhouse - Progressive - Pumpin' - Tech - Tribal
Other electronic music genres
Ambient | Breakbeat | Drum and bass | Electronica | Electronic Art Music | Hard Dance | Hardcore | House | Industrial | Synthpop | Techno | Trance

Ambient music
Ambient house - Dark ambient - Drone music - Illbient - Lowercase - New Age - Psybient
Other electronic music genres
Ambient | Breakbeat | Drum and bass | Electronica | Electronic Art Music | Hard Dance | Hardcore | House | Industrial | Synthpop | Techno | Trance