Homeostatic regulation has been shown to restore cortical activity in vivo following sensory deprivation, but it is unclear whether this recovery is uniform across all cells or specific to a subset of the network. To address this issue, we used chronic calcium imaging in behaving adult mice to examine the activity of individual excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the same region of the layer 2/3 monocular visual cortex following enucleation. We found that only a fraction of excitatory neurons homeostatically recover activity after deprivation and inhibitory neurons show no recovery. Prior to deprivation, excitatory cells that did recover were more likely to have significantly correlated activity with other recovering excitatory neurons, thus forming a subnetwork of recovering neurons. These network level changes are accompanied by a reduction in synaptic inhibition onto all excitatory neurons, suggesting that both synaptic mechanisms and subnetwork activity are important for homeostatic recovery of activity after deprivation. •In adult cortex, a subset of excitatory neurons recover activity after enucleation•Inhibitory neurons do not homeostatically recover activity over 72 hr•Excitatory neurons recover in subnetwork specific manner•Recovery of activity is facilitated by reduced synaptic inhibition Barnes et al. examine homeostatic recovery of activity of individual excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the adult cortex following enucleation. A fraction of excitatory neurons recover activity, in a subnetwork specific manner, but inhibitory cells do not recover activity over 72 hr.