There are many free WordPress themes available online, and they come in various designs and functionalities. You can find themes that cater to different types of websites such as photography, e-commerce, blogging, portfolio, etc. The best part about these themes is that they are completely free and easily accessible on the WordPress theme repository.
With so many choices at your disposal, it’s important to choose a theme that suits your website’s purpose and represents your brand effectively. You can also customize these themes according to your liking using page builders or by adding custom CSS stylesheets.
Best Free WordPress Themes
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) in the world. It powers over a third of all websites on the internet today, and it continues to grow in popularity due to its ease of use and versatility. One of the best things about WordPress is that it is open-source, which means that anyone can create themes and plugins for it. This has led to a massive collection of free WordPress themes available for download.
If you’re just starting with WordPress or need an affordable website design solution, then free WordPress themes are an excellent option for you. These themes offer great value because they have been designed by talented developers who want to share their work with others. They also come packed with features such as responsive design, custom widgets, page builders, and more.
Another advantage of using free WordPress themes is that there are so many options available.
Lovecraft
Lovecraft is a beautiful two-column blogging theme (named, I’m assuming, after the writer H.P. Lovecraft) by Anders Noren. It features a beautiful full-width image (replaced with post/page thumbnail images when on those pages), responsive design, gorgeous typography, and much more.
Hemingway
Hemingway is another great looking blogging theme by Anders Noren; who seems to be really good at creating beautiful themes for (and named after) writers. This particular theme features two-columns, responsive design, retina-ready assets, a full-width header image with parallax scrolling effect, custom accent color, custom logo upload, custom widgets, page templates, and more.
Storefront
Storefront is the stylish and extremely extendable free WooCommerce theme by WooThemes. Its entire purpose is to be the ultimate free theme option for anyone using WooCommerce. It’s guaranteed to always have up-to-date deep integration with the WooThemes flagship eCommerce plugin. It comes with several layout and color options, responsive design, and a growing library of premium extensions for advanced features and functionality. A great way to start your next eCommerce project for free and scale with premium tools as needed.
Gridsby
Gridsby is a Pinterest style gallery theme that’s perfect for photo blogging. It has a responsive design, retina-ready design elements, and includes an easy method for post photos to the front page gallery. It may be simple but that simplicity gives it a great look and feel that it should be perfect for inspiration gathering, photo journaling, and more.
Radcliffe
We have one final theme by Anders Noren for bloggers. I honestly didn’t mean to get three themes by the same person in one post but I’m a sucker for a great blogging theme and he definitely delivers. This theme uses large full-width images and transparent post title sections to make a big design statement with the standard post archive. Then, each post is given the readers full attention with a single column layout with nice spacing and great typographic choices. It’s a pleasure to read on.
Serene
Next up we have Serene; the first completely free theme from none other than Elegant Themes. It’s a beautiful single-column blogging theme with fully responsive design, custom colors for individual posts, and six different post formats to choose from. Every post is easy to read with awesome typography, big header images (or not, if you don’t want them), and text spacing that is easy on the eyes. It’s a wonderful theme for sharing and consuming content.
Twenty Fifteen
I’ve always been a big fan of the next two themes on this list. I’m not a blind supporter of the default WordPress themes that come out each year, but I think at least two of the last few have stood out and will hold up over time. In the case of Twenty Fifteen, I really like how it’s set up for writing extremely readable content (no matter what device someone is viewing it on). Its design is simple and gets out of your way both as a content creator and as a blog reader. It’s also probably one of a handful of side navigation themes that I enjoy.
Twenty Twelve
I’ve always admired Twenty Twelve. I think its a highly versatile theme for a free default theme; something that can be adapted to a business website just as easily as blogging. Its responsive comes with a front-page template, its own widgets, option display font, styling for post formats on both index and single views, and an optional no-sidebar page template. With a bit of customization, you can really make this theme work for you.
DW Timeline
DW Timeline is a WordPress theme with a novel design by DesignWall. Inspired by the Facebook timeline, DW’s post archive template is designed to display post like events on a vertical timeline. This would be a particularly good theme for telling chronological stories or a blogging project with a time aspect to it–such as 100 Days of Pizza (or a similar idea).
Pinnacle
Pinnacle is a bold and versatile theme with beautiful parallax scrolling sections by Kadence Themes. It comes with a flat minimal design, fully responsive layout, and options that make it great for businesses, online stores, portfolios, or personal use. It is also fully compatible with WooCommerce.
Arcade Basic
Arcade Basic is a uniquely designed theme by c.bavota. It’s lightweight, fully responsive, and sporting big visuals combined with multiple post formats. You can use the customizer to add you own large header image as well as create engaging content with video, image, aside, status, audio, quote, link, and gallery formats. To get the most out of this theme, pair it with JetPack, bbPress, BuddyPress, WPML, and WooCommerce.
Sparkling
Sparkling is a clean, minimal, and responsive WordPress theme by Colorlib. Developed using Bootstrap 3 and incorporating the latest standards of HTML5 and CSS3 (with an SEO friendly structure), Sparkling is an ideal theme for a wide variety of websites; from travel, to health, to business, portfolio, personal, and more. It comes with options to change the theme layout, colors, fonts, slider settings, and a lot more. It is multilingual ready and optimized to work with bbPress, Contact Form 7, JetPack, and other popular free and premium plugins.
Optimizer
Optimizer is a multi-purpose theme by the folks over at layerthemes. It lets you customize each element without needing to touch any code: You get to choose between two site layouts (full-width or boxed); it has a beautiful image slider; easy logo upload; 600+ fonts; powerful theme options; custom CSS field; and lots of color options. Optimizer is fully responsive–built with HTML5 and CSS3. It’s also SEO friendly, retina-ready, optimized for mobile, and translation ready. It can also be easily paired with WooCommerce, bbPres, MailChimp, and Contact Form 7.
Virtue
Virtue by Kadence Themes is another nice multi-purpose theme. It sports a clean modern design with a powerful options panel for customization. You can adjust the home layout, sliders, custom fields, fonts, and more without touching any CSS. Virtue is built using Bootstrap to ensure a responsive mobile friendly website. It can be used for business, portfolio, personal site, or even ecommerce when paired with WooCommerce.
Harmonic
Harmonic is an automattic theme aimed at anyone who wants to make a statement with their bold full-width content. It’s ideal for anyone with a lot of high-quality, powerful images. A band, travel blogger, or storytelling could easily make good use of this theme.
Eighties
Eighties by Justin Kopenpasah is a lovely single-column theme that can actually do more than just be a blog. For instance, it still has a sidebar and menu, but they stay hidden from site until the user clicks on one of the links in the upper corners. They then appear as stylish overlays. You can upload a custom header image or opt to use individual featured images (from posts/pages) as the header image. Eighties also plays nice with JetPack, bbPress, and more.
In conclusion, free WordPress themes can be a great way to set up an attractive website without spending any money. They are both versatile and reliable, and they come with a variety of features that make them ideal for just about any website. As long as you choose from reliable sources, you can be sure that the theme will be high quality and easy to use. With a few simple clicks, you can have your website up and running in no time. So why wait?