The best WordPress themes has improved immensely and experienced an overwhelming success in the past couple of years. This trend is not a coincidence. WordPress has become the most popular and widely used CMS today. Millions of people enjoy amazing websites build with WordPress every day from personal blogs and artwork galleries to corporate business websites.
In simple terms, WordPress themes dictate the functionality and design of a WordPress site without changing its basic software. To describe it further, a WordPress theme is like your clothing. While your pages, permalinks, posts and other basic elements of the structure can be labeled as your torso, legs and arms, the theme would be your cloak, boots and gloves..and maybe you funny hat.
Choosing a WordPress theme is not as easy as clicking your mouse. Therefore, you have to consider the goals of your website before you start researching. The more sophisticated the functionality and design of your website, the more flexible and robust should your theme be. In addition, your WordPress theme should also allow your website to grow and change just like your business and goals will. Check out the flexibility and customization options of the design and layout and make sure it is ready for mobile users.
You should also look into what kind of support that is being offered by the theme developer. This aspect is among the major differences between premium and free WordPress themes. To help you get started, here is a list of more than 30 best WordPress themes. Take your time in checking out each of them as this will allow you to know more about their features and functionality.
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links (at no extra cost to you). I recommend that you do your own independent research before purchasing any product or service. This article is not a guideline, a recommendation or endorsement of specific products.
Article Index
Premium Best WordPress Themes
Avada Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme – MORE INFO
The Avada theme is clean, very flexible and has a fully responsive design. It is packed with options, and has powerful customization options plus lots of awesome features, amazing layer slider, awesome flex slider plugin, unlimited colors, unlimited sidebars, custom post types, 500+google fonts, 11 custom widgets, tons of short codes, 4 post types, multiple portfolio and blog layout options, ratings system, SEO optimized, and is translation ready. The clean, modern design can be used for any type of website; business, corporate, portfolio, products, etc. It also comes with free support.
Lucid WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
Lucid is a sleek and modern magazine theme that does a great job displaying tons of content while at the same time avoiding the feeling of clutter. Clean design elements and a strict grid give the theme an organized layout that is a pleasure to read. Lucid is also fully responsive, meaning that the design will adapt to mobile phones and tablets for a more intuitive browsing experience. Flexible is perhaps the most feature-rich gallery theme from Elegant themes yet. Elegant themes has a affordable theme pack offering 80+ premium WordPress themes for only $39.
Awake WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
Awake is a modern, metro-styled WordPress theme that features a splash of color, a crisp and sleek design, and a dual column layout. With full optimizations for speed, SEO, readability, advertising and pageviews, Awake also brings all the usual MyThemeShop features.
KALLYAS – Responsive Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
Kallyas is an ultra-premium, highly-responsive WordPress theme built for modern websites. It’s extreme popular, super flexible, with clean design (and code), without no modesty – one of the most complete theme you can get your hands on. It has the latest technologies and trends – Amazing customizable Page Builder, Smart Loader, SEO Ready, WPML Ready, Huge variety of sliders (also premium licensed ones) and more.
Klou Portfolio Theme for WordPress – MORE INFO
Meet Klou. If you are looking to build your portfolio then you should consider using its highly customizable templates and select one of the 9 available color schemes.
Sahifa – Responsive WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
Sahifa is a Clean Responsive Magazine, News and Blog Template. It is powered by TiePanel, has a drag & drop home page builder, build in review system and much more.
Lounge – Clean Elegant WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
LOUNGE is a high quality professional WordPress theme for modern business or interactive creative use. Choose between 4 fluid AJAX animations, create unlimited Parallax pages, add unlimited sliders & slides to each page using two types of built-in sliders, take advantage of awesome Revolution Slider. Build you web site using our highly intuitive and friendly to use framework.
Kickstart – Retina Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme – MORE INFO
Kickstart is a powerful and fun to work with premium WordPress theme. Carefully handcrafted and designed with ease of use, functionality and flexibility in mind. Take a moment to explore its features on this live preview demo website.
Enfold – Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme – MORE INFO
Enfold is a responsive WordPress Theme (try resizing your browser), suited for business websites, shop websites, and users who want to showcase their work on a neat portfolio site. The Theme is built on top of the fabulous Avia Framework and offers support for the WPML MULTI LANGUAGE plugin, just in case you need it
CHAMELEON – Business WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
We know chameleons for their ability to change the color of their skin. The patterns and color combinations you find in chameleons are almost endless, and this theme is no different! Chameleon was created to be a uncomplicated and professional theme with loads of customization options that do not require web development experience to utilize. Elegantthemes has an affordable theme pack offering 80+ premium WordPress themes for only $39.
Femme Magazine / eCommerce Theme for WordPress – MORE INFO
Meet our most advanced theme. Femme is a responsive magazine / eCommerce theme for WordPress. Powered by the amazing WooCommerce engine. Enjoy.
U-Design WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
This theme is a real best seller at Themeforet. U-Design will easily help you to set any color to elements such as backgrounds, links, text, menu links, etc. The good thing is that it empowers you to completely change the look and feel quite easy and in no time. It’s a powerful theme which suits both, users with no programming background as well as advanced developers. There is a lot of great features and you can choose from over 200 fonts, including Google Font Directory and Cufón fonts. An important factor is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEO actually has been made a priority when designing this theme.
HalfCreative – One Page Portfolio WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
HalfCreative is a clean, minimal and elegant one page portfolio WordPress Theme suitable for any kind of creative and business use. The theme is highly optimized to ensure lightning fast loading time due to lazy-loading of images and compression of css/javascript.
The Retailer – Retina Responsive WooCommerce Theme – MORE INFO
The Retailer is Responsive, Retina Ready, shop theme build for WooCommerce 2.0+ and WordPress. The theme includes everything you need to start your online store right away.
Flexform – Retina Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme – MORE INFO
Flexform is the ultimate multi-purpose WordPress theme. It’s super responsive, retina ready, and built upon the 1170px Twitter Bootstrap framework. Featuring a clean, modern, and superbly slick design, packed with the most powerful Swift Framework which offers limitless possibilities. The incredible Swift Page Builder is at the core of our framework, giving you the control to create sites that do your content justice. With so many features, tools, variations and options to offer, it’s the last corporate theme we think you’ll ever need.
CoWorker | Responsive Retina Multi-Purpose Theme – MORE INFO
CoWorker is a Responsive Multipurpose Theme built for flexibility. Be it a Business, Portfolio, Corporate, Agency or any other kind of website, CoWorker will work just fine for you. Tons of Customizations are possible with this theme that’ll help you redefine your website’s brand value.
Glare Photography / Portfolio Theme for WordPress – MORE INFO
Are you a Photographer or a Model who needs to showcase his/her work? Search no more, Glare is the perfect theme for you.
SCRN – Responsive single page portfolio – MORE INFO
SCRN is a single responsive portfolio wordpress theme. Perfect to promote your work or your business. Is compatible with all modern mobile devices. Other htan the minimalistic single page design, it also has a blog.
Fusion WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
Fusion is a sleek and flashy theme that melds fun and professionalism into one awesome package. It is perfect for for startups, tech companies or design firms. This theme will impress your visitors with its cutting edge style. It also comes packaged with tons of great features, such as responsive design, custom background images and more! Flexible is perhaps the most feature-rich gallery theme from Elegant themes yet. Elegant themes has a affordable theme pack offering 80+ premium WordPress themes for only $39.
Salient – Responsive Portfolio & Blog Theme – MORE INFO
Salient is an ultra responsive, beautiful WordPress theme that is perfect for freelancers, photographers, designers and creative agencies alike. Its stunning design and layout capabilities will give your portfolio pieces the attention they deserve.
SIMPLEPRESS WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
SimplePress is a simple and clean page-based corporate WordPress theme. It is great for anyone looking to give their website professional look and feel. The theme features a business style homepage with a beautiful well integrated JavaScript slider and clear hierarchy, as well as fully functional Blog and Gallery sections. Elegant themes has a affordable theme pack offering 80+ premium WordPress themes for only $39.
Bazar Shop – Multi-Purpose e-Commerce Theme – MORE INFO
Bazar is a fresh and creative theme that utilises the powerful Woo Commerce plugin to create a very versatile WordPress powered shop, with unlimited layout options and a lot of unbelievable features.
Modernize – Flexibility of WordPress – MORE INFO
Modernize includes a useful ‘Page Builder’ that allow you to create your own page designs easily using the drag-drop module. Modernize comes with a lot of other options and the admin panel is very feature rich. You can create unlimited sidebars, choosing over 350 fonts or if you want to use your own, there is a cufon uploader. The theme has 15 predefined background pattern, but if you want to use your own background, again, the theme has a custom background uploader. You can also translate each elements to your language from the admin panel.
Flexible Responsive WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
Flexible is a sleek and minimal portfolio theme packed full of some awesome features. The theme puts your work first, keeping the design elements to a minimum while still maintaining a definitive modern style. With its filterable, ajax-powered multi-media gallery, Flexible is one of Elegant themes’ most feature-rich gallery themes. If you sign up with Elegant Themes you will get access to 80+ high quality themes for only $39.
907 – Responsive WP One Page Parallax – MORE INFO
This is a awesome one page WP theme with tons of options and features for a creative portfolio. Go and check out the awesome parallax effects.
Tripod – Professional WordPress Photography Theme – MORE INFO
Tripod is a responsive drag-and-drop layout builder WordPress theme intended to power professional photographers blogs or sites coming with complex image gallery options.
Nimble Responsive WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
Nimble is a big, bold, and beautiful theme that doesn’t let its own style get in the way. Nimble’s colors are toned down but still delicious and its style is bold but still leaves room to breath. Browsing Nimble on a 27″ Cinema Display is quite a treat, but so is browsing the theme on a small screen as well due to Nimble’s fully responsive design.
DayNight Magazine Theme – MORE INFO
DayNight features a fully responsive layout so you don’t have to worry about plugins to make your site work on mobile and tablets. DayNight is a sleek, contrasted WordPress theme that can function as a personal blog, a magazine-style theme, or a company blog. It’s fully responsive, including multiple post displays on the homepage, shortcodes, the MyThemeShop options panel, and premium MyThemeShop support to help every step of the way.
Jarida – Responsive WordPress News, Magazine, Blog – MORE INFO
Jarida is a Clean Responsive Magazine, News and Blog Template
Novelty – Retina Ready Responsive WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
Novelty – is clean and modern WordPress Portfolio & Blog Theme. With a responsive design it is easily usable with any device, without removing any content! Can be used by photographers, portfolio, companies, private blogs and more.
King Size – Fullscreen Background – MORE INFO
King Size WP is a WordPress version of the top-selling HTML template. It is perfect for a variety of purposes, although focused towards Photographers and those using Portfolios to display their past and present work collections. It’s another great example of photography website templates.
Modest Portfolio Theme – MORE INFO
A minimal WordPress theme with beautiful typography and subtle gradients from Elegant Themes and it certainly belongs in this list of Minimal WordPress CMS Themes.
Hot Topix – Modern WordPress Magazine Theme – MORE INFO
Hot Topix is the complete makeover for your WordPress magazine site! This ultra-modern, professional theme is retina-ready, fully-responsive and comes with five different ad units, including a wallpaper ad and a special mobile ad unit. Hot Topix also comes with a drag-and-drop homepage, featured posts on each category page, a “sticky” menu bar, post/page slideshows and so much more!
NASH – Responsive HTML5 One Page WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
NASH is a beautifully simple, visually stunning, and striking ‘One-Page’ creative WordPress theme. Perfect for design agencies. The template is fully responsive, and looks amazing on your Smartphone, Tablet, and Desktop. Beautiful typography, gorgeous iconography, subtle CSS3 effects, and those small details that really make you stand out from the crowd.
Pravda – Retina Responsive WordPress Blog Theme – MORE INFO
Pravda is a super-duper customizable, ultra responsive, retina-ready WordPress Theme that everybody wants. Pravda can be configured to focus on your work, your blogging, or both. Theme is powered by the SMOF Options Panel, which provides tons of options to manage and modify any aspect of the theme – it is well suited for both beginners with no coding knowledge and developers.
Magnifique Responsive Blogging Theme for WordPress – MORE INFO
Magnifique is a minimal responsive WordPress theme for bloggers. Go back to basics again. No need for sidebars, widgets or complicated settings. Just blog.
GoodWork – Modern Multi-Purpose Responsive Theme – MORE INFO
GoodWork is the absolutely ultimate theme for your business! It is an elegant & modern solution packed up with an incredibly great amount of high quality features. Shortcodes, sliders, layout builders, theme options, page templates, responsiveness and retina ready, etc., are all in here! Beautiful outside backed by a great framework and supported by professionals, this is the all in one WordPress solution for your business!!
Free Best WordPress Themes
Responsive free WP Theme – MORE INFO
Responsive Theme is very flexible and the fluid grid system will adapt your website to look great on any device. This is important for your business with more and more people surfing the Internet from mobile devices. It is a feature rich theme with 9 page templates, 11 widget areas, 6 template layouts, 4 menu positions and more. You will get powerful but simple theme options for full CMS control with easy logo upload,social networking and webmaster tools etc. Responsive is WooCommerce compatible, multilingual ready (WPML), Retina-Ready and currently translated into 28 languages. Cross-Browser compatible and FREE Support.
Attitude WordPress Theme – MORE INFO
Attitude is a Simple, Clean and Responsive Retina Ready WordPress Theme which adapts automatically to your tablets and mobile devices. Along with the elegant design the theme is easily customizable with numerous theme options. Some of the highlighted options are two site layout (Narrow and Wide), 5 layouts for every post/page, 5 Page Templates, 5 widget areas, 4 custom widgets, featured slider to highlight your post/page, 11 social icons, webmaster tools, custom background, custom Header, custom menu, custom favicon, custom CSS, custom webclip icon, custom logo and many more. Also supports some of the popular plugins like Breadcrumb NavXT, WP-PageNavi and Contact Form 7.
Custom Community – MORE INFO
Standout with a professional custom made WordPress theme designed by you. Responsive with just 1 click. Ready for your next blog, portfolio site, magazine, social network or shop. Use it out-of-the-box or customize it up to the smallest details. Spend your time on your ideas, not on trouble shooting. Easy to use jQuery slideshow. List posts in magazine layouts. 100+ easy theme options. 20 widget areas, 5 special widgets and 2 custom WP 3.0 header menus. 15+ languages available. 3 predefined colour schemes (white, grey, black) with clean and simple browsersafe CSS design to start from. Working with latest WordPress, BuddyPress, WooCommerce and most common plugins.
Photogram – MORE INFO
Photogram is very fluid and responsive, thanks to its slick and nifty jQuery effects. The Masonry and Infinite Loading scripts make page scrolling more convenient than ever. Released as a feature-packed WordPress theme, Photogram comes with a massive slider on the home page for you to showcase your favorite photos and 3 gallery templates (Picasa, Pinterest and WordPress uploads) that are powered with AJAX-loading feature. And really, to top it off, Photogram is FREE.
Montezuma Free WP Theme – MORE INFO
Montezuma is a responsive, customizable and search engine optimized HTML5 / CSS3 theme. Choose between responsive, flexible and static layouts. Edit or create new page templates online, without FTP uploads. Add custom widget areas everywhere. Colorbox slideshow for standard WP galleries, auto post thumbs, advanced excerpts, Google fonts, transparent color picker, import/export settings and more.
MetroPress – MORE INFO
MetroPress is stylish and clean creative theme for WordPress blog. Its design is a perfect foundation for Windows 8 fans blog. The theme supports and comes with custom widgets, drop-down menus, javascript slideshow and lots of other useful features.
Catch Box free Theme – MORE INFO
Lightweight, adaptable, box shaped and simple – the Catch Box free WordPress theme is for both professionals and bloggers. The theme is based on CSS3 and HTML5 while a responsive web design allows viewing from different devices. Catch box is among the free WordPress themes that has the WPML or Multilingual Ready feature, and is presently translated into Danish, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Among the various reasons for using Catch Box are responsive web design, theme options, custom menus, featured sliders, social links, webmaster tools, custom backgrounds, adspace widget, popular plugin support and custom header.
Photography WP Theme – MORE INFO
This simple and elegant WordPress template is great solution for photography portfolio blog. Photography, like our other themes, comes with Shared Bar that will help your visitors to share your blog with their friends.
Tell me what you think of the best WordPress themes in this article by adding your comments below. Did you find your favorite? I hope you would find them useful enough to share with your friends.