Most WordPress themes nowadays are hell-bent on packing in features and becoming the go-to choice for every use case. However, we’re of the opinion that sometimes less is more. That’s why we’ve decided to put together this list of the best minimalist WordPress themes around.
If you value clean design that puts your content front and center, you’ve come to the right place! Let’s take a look at the themes that made the cut.
The 30 Best Minimalist WordPress Themes
Each of these themes was selected on the basis of its aesthetics and adherence to relatively modern design trends. We went through several major premium themes sites and selected the candidates we felt best embodied the idea of minimalism – a clean, uncluttered style.
To make your search a little easier if you’re looking for a specific type of theme, we’ve added the most appropriate use case for each theme in brackets after its name.
1. Bushwick Lightweight (Multipurpose)
Bushwick Lightweight is an uncluttered theme that includes four different pre-built layouts. All make excellent use of white space and elegant typography. Furthermore, the theme was designed with portfolios in mind, but can be easily adapted to fit any kind of site.
Key Features:
Price: $49 ǀ More Information
2. Raven (Multipurpose)
Raven is a multipurpose theme that offers eleven pre-designed layouts ranging from portfolios to online shops. Its design features a mix of clean grids with animated calls to action. The demos reveal a penchant for black and white color templates, making it perfect for sites aiming for an elegant look.
Key Features:
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
3. Throne (Multipurpose)
Firstly, Throne stands out due its great use of colorful icons and calls to action. Each demo employs a different color palette, all of which look beautiful. This theme is a solid choice for graphic and industrial designers, as well as architects.
Key Features:
- Colorful design.
- Multiple pre-designed layouts, menus, and grid systems that can be mixed and matched.
Price: $49 ǀ More Information
4. Velvet (Business)
The Velvet theme feels like a throwback to when every website wasn’t using a full-width slider on its home page. It’s a classy theme with clean navigation that’s perfect for informative business sites.
Key Features:
- Zooming slider powered by AviaSlider.
- Includes a color picker, enabling you to change your color scheme instantly.
Price: $49 ǀ More Information
5. Readolog (Blogging)
The sixth entry in our list of best minimalist WordPress themes is all about blogging. Readalog enables you to display your latest posts in a clean grid at the top of your page, and employs a beautiful slow colorization hover effect. In addition, the theme employs an attractive design that’s perfectly suited to blog posts.
Key Features:
- Multiple menu options.
- Customized admin dashboard.
- Seven different post formats.
Price: $44 ǀ More Information
6. Zito (Portfolio)
Zito is a colorful grid-based theme designed for creative agencies. It enables you to display your work with unique pages for each of your projects, then share them with any number of social media platforms with a single click.
Key Features:
- Unique swipe effect for mobile displays.
- Search Engine Optimized.
Price: $39 ǀ More Information
7. Bayse (Blog)
Bayse doesn’t mess around when it comes to minimalism. This theme features a single-column layout, which forces the reader to zoom on the content. Due to this, using the theme feels like reading a particularly well-designed online magazine.
Key Features:
- Bold single-column design.
- Focused on typography.
- Comes with nine pre-determined custom post types.
Price: $39 ǀ More Information
8. Mustang (Multipurpose)
Mustang is a multipurpose theme that lives up to the elegance of its namesake. This high-end theme relies on strong, classic typefaces and a monotone color combination to create an upscaled feel.
Key Features:
- Includes the Visual Composer and Slider Revolution plugins for free.
- Retina ready.
- Live customization option.
Price: $49 ǀ More Information
9. The Blog (Blogging)
The tenth entry on our compilation of best minimalist WordPress themes won’t be winning any creativity awards for its name, but does its job particularly well. Stepping into The Blog feels like taking a peek into an upscale artistic magazine due to its clean lines and sparse splashes of color.
Despite its vintage design, The Blog doesn’t scrimp on features. It includes attractive About Me widgets, popular posts sections, and social media integrations.
Key Features:
- Includes a live customizer.
- Ships with three different comment systems.
Price: $44 ǀ More Information
10. Blossom (Portfolio)
The Blossom theme relies on its monotone color palette to project an aura of elegance, which is hardly groundbreaking. However, it achieves a unique look thanks to a couple of simple juxtaposition techniques, such as overlaying descriptions and headlines on top of images.
Key Features:
- Includes the Visual Composer and Slider Revolution plugins.
- WooCommerce ready.
Price: $49 ǀ More Information
11. Sprint (Portfolio)
The Sprint theme offers an original take on the corporate layout that’s so popular nowadays – a full-width header, followed by icon blurbs, an About Me section, then a contact form.
Their version somehow manages to come off looking fresh despite hitting each of these clichés, thanks to a solid combination of colors and simple hover animations.
Key Features:
- Built using Bootstrap.
- Includes a custom 404 error page.
Price: $49 ǀ More Information
12. Proton (Portfolio)
This simple theme was built with a single idea in mind: to provide WordPress users with a practical portfolio solution. Proton comes with four different portfolio styles using multiple columns and display styles, as well as multiple post layouts.
Key Features:
Price: $39 ǀ More Information
13. Minimal (Portfolio)
Out of all the entries in this list of best minimalist WordPress themes, perhaps no other lives up to the adjective as much as this theme. Its design might look a bit outdated, but personally, we’re big fans of the simple list layout it employs.
As a result, Minimal is perfect for those users looking for a sober portfolio theme. It might even be a good fit if you’re looking to display your resume online!
Key Features:
- Infinite scrolling.
- Font-based icons for retina screens.
Price: $39 ǀ More Information
14. Avoir (Portfolio)
At first sight, Avoir could easily be confused for an online magazine. It relies on colorful product images that leads to uncluttered product pages – perfect for a designer or an online agency looking to display their portfolio without any distractions.
Key Features:
- Custom drag-and-drop builder.
- Includes the Slider Revolution plugin.
Price: $49 ǀ More Information
15. Minimalize (Landing Page)
This one-page theme is perfect for businesses that want to display their creative prowess. It includes four different layouts, mixing parallax animations with smooth transitions to create a pleasant effect.
Key Features:
- Integrates with WooCommerce seamlessly.
- Includes the Slider Revolution plugin.
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
16. Milano (Multipurpose)
This little-known theme offers a surprisingly wide variation of layouts geared towards agencies, freelancers, and photography professionals. Its sparse look is also a perfect fit for online stores that want to remain uncluttered.
Key Features:
- Ready for integration with WooCommerce.
- Includes the Slider Revolution and Visual Composer plugins at no additional cost.
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
17. Soigné (Blogging)
This unassuming blogging theme takes its inspiration from printed card designs. It offers a compact layout that displays particularly well on mobile devices, and also includes a wide variety of widgets to customize each page.
Key Features:
- Ready for integration with Contact Form 7 and MailChimp.
- Custom-made Instagram and MailChimp widgets.
Price: $49 ǀ More Information
18. CAM (Multipurpose)
CAM has only recently joined the ranks of the best minimalist WordPress themes as its launch was not too long ago. It won us over thanks to its elegant combination of modern headers, and a well-designed sidebar.
Key Features:
- Custom page builder powered by the Visual Composer plugin.
- Enables you to display a full-screen video background.
Price: $49 ǀ More Information
19. Ouidah (E-Commerce)
Ouidah is the first pure e-commerce item to be featured on our list of best minimalist WordPress themes, and it was a no-brainer. It uses a clean grid system to display products and give each of them the attention they deserve. Plus, it makes good use of robust fonts to give each product page excellent readability.
Key Features:
- Lazy loading product images.
- Includes its own child theme for in-depth customization.
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
20. Topography (Photography)
Topography is the essence of simplicity. This theme does away with distracting features, and displays each of your images in an attractive grid. Furthermore, each photo can be customized with advanced information such as the camera and type of lens you used. All this data is displayed using simple CSS animations over each of your photos.
Key Features:
- Custom-made CSS animations
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
21. Paperleaf (Multipurpose)
Despite being marketed as a multipurpose theme, we’ve found that Paperleaf is a perfect fit for blogging sites. Its attractive masonry layout is perfect for displaying your latest blog posts, and works well in conjunction with a sidebar.
Key Features:
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
22. DW Jason (Portfolio)
DW Jason is a clean portfolio solution for design professionals. On first impression it may look a bit underwhelming, but that’s just what attracted us to it in the first place. There are no fancy tricks up its sleeve – it’s a simple design for displaying creative work.
Key Features:
- Built using Bootstrap.
- Ready for integration with WooCommerce
Price: $49 ǀ More Information
23. Nudge (Creative Agencies)
Nudge is a colorful theme that stands out due to its fun alternating column layouts, parallax effects, and classy calls to action. Most notably, the theme enables you to sell your services online using WooCommerce.
Key Features:
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
24. Superba (Photography)
Superba is a media-focused theme for photographers and creative agencies. Despite the austere design, its pages pop due to the superb integration of photographs and colorful animations.
Furthermore, it includes seven different styles to showcase your galleries – each one better than the last.
Key Features:
- Custom page-builder.
- WooCommerce ready.
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
25. Aurum (E-Commerce)
The ambitious Aurum theme includes layouts for several types of outlets including fashion and tech stores. Each of these designs was created to reflect the unique sensibilities of their respective fields, and they hit the mark in most cases.
In particular, the jewelry store design is a joy to behold – it uses a cream and gold color palette that fits the subject perfectly.
Key Features:
- Retina-ready design.
- Enables you to create region-specific stores.
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
26. Core (Photography)
The Core theme is perfect for photographers who want to display their work using a simple layout. All photographs appear side by side in an infinite loop with a nice reflective effect. It all comes together to create a simple, elegant style.
Key Features:
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
27. Yusuf (Multipurpose)
Yusuf is by far the most whimsical of our inclusions in this list of best minimalist WordPress themes. It features a simple design, which manages to jump out of the screen thanks to its inspired use of color.
We’re particularly fond of the highlighting effect the theme uses throughout.
Key Features:
- Includes a live customizer.
- Over 50 custom animations.
Price: $44 ǀ More Information
28. Savoy (E-Commerce)
Savoy is an elegant theme for WordPress e-commerce sites. It features a neat store design, which makes excellent use of whitespace. Furthermore, the product thumbnails include smooth, stunning transition effects.
Key Features:
- Product search feature powered by Ajax.
- Retina ready.
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
29. Bone (Multipurpose)
Bone is the last entry in our roundup of best minimalist WordPress themes, and it’s a good one. This theme features an eclectic design that’s perfect for tech-centric websites, and includes a wealth of functionality to enhance your visitor’s experience such as built-in review and related posts systems.
Key Features:
- Includes social sharing functions.
- Optimized for fast loading times.
Price: $59 ǀ More Information
30. Adios
Adios comes with loads of style in a simple format. There are nine simple but stunning home page versions you can choose from, each stylishly minimal.
Key Features:
- Fast and light weight
- Drag and drop content building
- One click demo content
- 700+ Google fonts
- And more
Price: $37 | More Information
Conclusion
All 30 of these best minimalist WordPress themes are great for putting together a clean site that highlights your content – but they may not be perfect for every occasion.
If you’re not convinced that minimalism is right for you, check out some of these alternatives from our archives:
What’s your take on the rise of minimalist WordPress themes in 2016? Subscribe and share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!
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