Here are some of the best free WordPress themes for creating blogs, porfolio sites and more.
The WordPress community is big. Really big. We’re talking thousands of designers and developers, tens of thousands of writers, and millions of users, all contributing to pushing WordPress forward.
And one very popular way to do this is designing and developing free WordPress themes.Free WordPress themes are a great way to get a blog or website off the ground. You might want to start writing about a topic but don’t want to invest the money in a custom site design on top of hosting and a domain. And once your site is up and running, there’s nothing to stop you dissecting them, building on top of them and learning from them.
01. Hemingway
Classic blog template with large text
Unless you want to change themes every year it’s best to pick something that won’t look dated as design trends evolve, and Hemingway is a good option in that regard. It’s a simple, elegant two-column layout with classic typography and large, readable text. Bloggers will find it ideal. Hemingway is built to be responsive, so will work on desktop and mobile.
02. SKT Full Width
Fill the browser with your large images
This is a nice one if you’ve a site whose main purpose is to display images; it uses the whole browser window and lets you add discriptions via overlay text. The only thing to watch out for is whether your images will stand up to being displayed on very large screens.
03. Origin
Origin, beautiful type for long reads
If you want to fit a lot of text onto your homepage, Origin does a good job of that without looking messy or cluttered. Your articles are arranged in a column that gives each one space for a decent intro length, and the type looks great. A good choice for a site with a lot of reading.
04. Fashionista
Bold headlines for a magazine blog
Fashionista is another type-driven theme that’s good for magazine-style blogs. We like the bold headlines and pleasingly busy layout that will look good on both desktop and mobile.
05. Hatch
The image grid shows visitors your work with no clicking or scrolling
Illustrators, photographers and artists will love this theme: the layout has one slot for your main image and then a grid of 12 that instantly gives visitors a sense of what your work is like. It’s a great use of space that fits a lot of content into one screen.
06. Optimizer
Fully optimised: you can customise every element
Optimizer is aptly named, as it’s super easy to customise for optimum satisfaction; the most advanced theme options panel lets you customize each and every element of your site with ease. It’s fully responsive and retina ready, so no need to worry about mobile compatibility. The uses are endless – from personal blogging and portfolios to services, this theme gives you so many options you can be hard picked for choice.
07. Future Lite
Creative agencies might want to check out this smart, feature rich theme
A clean, creative, feature-rich and multipurpose theme that would be perfect for creative agencies, creative portfolios or freelancers. The responsive layout of this WordPress theme adapts well to the screen size of different device your visitors are using. Future is also retina ready and will look sharp on high resolution displays. It’s powered with custom menu, custom header, sidebar widget, featured image, theme options, nice typography and built-in pagination features.
08. Longform
Tell all your stories with Longform
Great for storytellers, Longform is a free WordPress theme designed to be fully compatible with the powerful Aesop Story Engine plugin. It includes beautiful styles for all Aesop story modules with no code snippets or extra configuration required. Fully responsive, retina ready and super easy to customise.
09. Moesia
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words…
Moesia is perfect for building your business’s online presence. Choose from eleven predefined blocks and build the homepage that best suits your company. Each of the homepage blocks can have a parallax background image and its own set of colours. Featuring a good selection of Google Fonts, two types of layouts for the blog page, cool animations and effects, a parallax header and much more… Make sure you have a great header image to grab attention!
10. TA Dailyblog
A great blogging template for the avid blogger!
TA DailyBlog offers a simple and clean design with full optimisation for smartphones, tablets, desktops and any other devices. This free WordPress theme would be ideal for blogging, especially for daily or hobby bloggers who love to share their stuff. It’s very flexible and fully customizable with 16 color schemes and smooth and fast user experience. What’s more, the theme is SEO friendly, with a Schema compatible structure that will make Google love your website. It supports most popular plugins, too.
11. Nictitate
A smart and savvy template to make an impact
Nictitate is an incredibly versatile template: from blogging and portfolios to online stores and services, this theme can be customized to fit any and all of those needs. This multi-purpose free responsive template will add a touch of class and professionalism to any site.
12. InterStellar
InterStellar is a clean, sophisticated design
Create and manage your portfolio or blog with ease with this clean and sophisticated InterStellar design. With multiple portfolio page layouts, this theme’s options allow you to change the layout, colour scheme, logo and add your Google Analytics code, buttons, Google maps, columns and more.
13. Arcade
Create a stand-out site with fully responsive HTML5 theme Arcade
Create a stand-out website with Arcade, a lightweight and fully responsive HTML5 theme. Customise it to your taste by adding your own header image, page layout, site width and more. Each post can be distinguished with one of the eight supported formats; video, image, aside, status, audio, quote, link and gallery.
14. vFlex
vFlex was designed specifically with designers and bloggers in mind
Designed specially with bloggers and designers in mind, vFlex is a stylish, free, responsive WordPress theme. Its main features include an inbuilt FlexSlider so you can simply select featured images, and an integrated VibeOptions panel, which supports logo upload, import and export settings and many other features. vFlex’s responsive layout also means the theme looks great on iPad, iPhones, and other devices.
Next page: the next 10 best free WordPress themes
15. Splendio
Splendio provides a good balance of content
Splendio has done a great job of balancing the featured content of the page with additional added value content. You want to promote the other pages and posts on your site (to increase traction and time on site) without taking away from the reason the visitor is there in the first place. This is a difficult task that the designers and developers of Splendio have done well. The details and colours really help to make this a great blog theme.
16. Origin Lite
Origin’s minimal yet stylish design allows users to focus on content
Origin is a premium, fully responsive WordPress blog theme with a minimal, clean design that allows visitors to focus on content. Origin Lite is the only free version of this theme, which features a fixed two-column layout, responsive gallery and custom widgets for categories and social media networks.
17. Meeta
Don’t overlook this ‘plain Jane’ theme
Sometimes “Plain Jane” themes like Meeta get overlooked. However themes like this are easily converted and modified to fit your site and content. With two navigations, a featured graphic and a responsive layout, this free WordPress theme will act as a great foundation for your site or blog. However you will need to dedicate the time to customise it a bit.
18. Folder
Free WordPress theme Folder is perfect for showcasing projects and products
Folder is a free WordPress theme with a slight retro feel to it. With a design dominated by images, this responsive theme is perfect for displaying projects and products. Features include custom project posts and admin panel, five different widgets included (video, latest work, contact form, twitter feed, recent posts), and more.
19. YAMINTH
Yet another minimal WordPress theme available for free download
There’s no shortage of modern and minimal WordPress themes available online. But YAMINTH (Yet Another Minimal Theme) and its unusual image layout caught our eye. The free theme comes with light colors, dark footer, Google Web Fonts and jQuery fade in, fade out of images. It also hasan options page for easy customisation and is free for use in both personal and commercial projects.
With an unlimited selection of colour themes this theme would be appropriate for any blogger. Another feature, which has been cropping up on some of the newer WordPress themes, is the Translation-ready abilities, reaching new audiences in a foreign languages.
20. Thoughts
Thoughts takes it cue from flat design
Like flat design and want to use large images on your website or blog? Want it to be responsive? Then as free WordPress themes go, Thoughts is probably good one to investigate.
21. Glider
Who needs images? Glider brings text to the fore
Don’t want to mess about trying to find beautiful imagery? Looking for free WordPress themes that focus on the text, to make that look beautiful instead? This minimal text-focused theme is all about seamless reading: no page loads, no interruptions, just a quick and easy way to access content.
22. MyStile
MyStile is clean and lightweight
One of our favourite sources of themes is Woothemes, and they’ve got a few tasty free WordPress themes as well. MyStile is a clean, lightweight WooCommerce theme, designed as a canvas which you can use as-is, or easily create a unique design to match your products. The theme is responsive as standard, and comes bundled with plenty of options and alternate colour schemes.
23. Travelify
Travelify is inspired by nature
The Travelify free WordPress theme is inspired by nature. Fully customizable, with several Theme Options and page templates, this theme is an obvious choice for travel blogs, green thinking and adventurists.
Next page: the next 10 best free WordPress themes
24. Clean Retina
Clean Retina is simple, clean, responsive and retina-ready
Clean Retina delivers exactly what it says on the tin. The theme is simple, clean, responsive and retina-ready. There is a selection of nine homepage layout options, also a large homepage slider with space for supporting text. This is one of those free WordPress themes that would work nicely for bloggers or small business owners.
25. Simple Corp
Simple Corp has plenty of time saving features
Simple Corp is a responsive HTML Theme by Site5. It includes plenty of time-saver features, so no need hunting around for plug-ins. The contact page consists of a built-in contact form furthermore and a large Google Map. Multiple colour styles can be easily accessed via the colour options tab. One of the best free WordPress themes we’ve seen for business, it can update a corporate website with a fresh vibe.
26. Photo
Photo is the ideal free WordPress theme for photographers
Photo is, you won’t be surprised to hear, best suited for a photographer, as its major feature is the responsive gallery. The theme is clean with a bold header that emphasizes your logo. This is perfect if you’re looking for a minimal and versatile theme.
27. Great
Great is exactly what it claims to be
With an unlimited selection of colour themes, as well as being SEO Optimized, this free WordPress theme would be appropriate for any blogger. Another feature which has been cropping up on some of the newer themes is the Translation-ready abilities, reaching new audiences in a foreign languages.
28. Balloons
Balloons is the theme for you if you want to play around with scrolling effects
This free WordPress theme uses parallax scrolling. Cleverly, Balloons builds it into a minimalistic design that lets the viewer focus on the cool scrolling effect. While a small business or corporation may not get what they want out of this theme, it would work beautifully for an event or personal website.
29. Grid
Grid is great for a graphically rich or photo-heavy site
Grid gives you the feeling you’re on a site that’s had a lot of thought put into its design. This free WordPress theme would work really well for a portfolio, artist or event site. It’s very graphic or photo-heavy, so make sure you have the content to back it up. One plus is that this theme maintains its responsiveness quite well.
30. Sensitive
Sensitive features a Metro-styled accent to its design
Sensitive is a fully responsive theme built using Twitter’s Bootstrap framework with Metro Styled Accent. It ships with three different page templates, support for custom backgrounds and menus. It’s a great option if you’re looking for clean and modern, without a lot of fussy code.
Next page: the next 10 best free WordPress themes
31. OShine
Oshine is a creative multi-layout, multi-purpose WordPress portfolio theme with 18 unique demos. A great choice for a portfolio or photography website.
32. _ARCHITEKT
Architekt is a minimalist, responsive theme
Architekt’s layout and minimalistic approach to design makes content (especially photos) stand out well. This is a really nicely designed and well thought-out responsive theme.
33. Skeleton
Skeleton is minimal and responsive
Skeleton has a lot going for it. Firstly, it’s very minimal so if you know what you’re doing it will be very easy for you to layer your own flavour of style and colour on it. Secondly, it’s responsive, so it’s ready for any and all devices. Lots of widget and featured areas makes this a very versatile WordPress theme.
34. Shuttershot
Shuttershot is a great choice for photographers
Shuttershot is another free WordPress theme that lets the content speak for itself. If you have less than stellar photographs or graphics you may want to use a different theme. Allocating the entire homepage to a single image will pressure you to highlight your best work. Make sure your content can support this really well made theme before you move forward with it.
35. Panoramica
With a full-width slideshow on the homepage, Panoramica is perfect for showcasing your photos
If you want to showcase images in all their glory, free WordPress theme Panoramica may be just what you’re after. Its design heavily emphasizes the use of images, with its appearance fully customiseable through an extensive options panel. Panoramica also features a full-width slideshow on the homepage, perfect for grabbing prospective client’s and employer’s attention.
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