Top 10 Free WordPress Blog Themes

Creating a WordPress blog is one of the simplest ways to share your ideas with the world and build a massive following. Many creative heads have turned to the WordPress blogging platform to express their talents and build a strong portfolio online. While there are many other ways to set up an online presence too, creating a WordPress blog adds a sense of professionalism to it. Besides, the content management system is very easy to use and set up and comes with tons of flexibility and powerful features as well. One of the amazing features of WordPress is its enormous catalog of themes.

Customizing your WordPress blog with a beautiful theme will make it unique and alluring to your website visitors. You do not need to be a tech-savvy person to set up a WordPress theme and it does not need any huge investment either. There are many free themes that you can try on your WordPress blog and decide how it suits your preferences. Choosing an attractive theme will set your website apart from the crowd and will define the success of your online venture.

Top 10 Free WordPress Blog Themes

You can easily integrate your WordPress blog with your social media accounts and drive more traffic to the site. However, if your website is untidy, has monetization elements thrown all around, and uses a low-quality font, then no one would stick around to read your blogs. This will increase the bounce rate and decrease the value and ranking of your WordPress website. Therefore, you should get a great WordPress theme that will help to achieve your goals.

Your website theme should not just be appealing to the eye, but it should be responsive as well. This will ensure that your users do not face any scaling issues when viewing your website on a mobile device. Below are some of the best free WordPress blog themes that will add a great look and feel to your site.

1. ColorMag

ColorMag is one of the most popular free themes for WordPress blogs. It is best suited for tech news, magazines, publishing sites, and bloggers that keep their readers engaged with regular posts. It comes with many free demo templates as well, which allows you to choose from different layouts to suit your needs. You can also upgrade to the Pro version of ColorMag for more customizer features, page settings, and blog layouts.

The free version of ColorMag will be ideal for bloggers who do not want much functionality, but just a cool way to customize their website. You can customize the logo, menu, header, featured category slider, highlighted posts, sidebar, posts style, and more. The theme even has an option to place an ad on the header to add to your monetization efforts. Note that importing the demo will import posts and images as well.

2. Sydney

Sydney is one of the most preferred WordPress business themes for companies and freelancers. It allows you to create a strong online presence with an awesome site. If you are familiar with using Elementor, then Sydney can bring a host of features that you can use for making your blog look more professional. It gives you full control over the color options, fonts, layout, slider, header, and more.

You will need to install the companion plugins to get started with Sydney and to customize it your way. If you are not looking to use a custom front page but only want to keep your site as a magazine and news style blog, then you will have to set the homepage settings to your latest posts. You can change the layout and view from the Blog options panel in the Customizer.

3. ArimoLite

ArimoLite is a minimalistic airy WordPress theme that gives a clean and classy appearance to your blog. It features a simple style and color palette that can be customized to suit your needs. You can also update the menu, header elements, and logo as per your requirements. The theme makes it quite easy to add widgets for advertisements or to share your story with your readers.

ArimoLite is designed for beginners who do not want anything fancy but just a clean and elegant way to make their blogs more structured. It offers easy readability as well, which will allow your readers to stay on the topic without being distracted by too many elements. You can also add your social media profile to the website header for easy sharing and access. ArimoLite also supports integration with Mailchimp for WordPress, which allows you to create newsletters, opt-in forms, and more.

4. Wellington

Wellington is another simple and clean WordPress theme that allows you to customize your blog as per your liking. You can add the magazine widget and modify it to a column view or grid view as you want. It allows you to show featured posts from your most popular categories on the top when a reader visits your website. You can also place ads and author info on the sidebar using widgets.

Those who are new to WordPress and blogging will find the Wellington theme very easy to use. It makes the blog appear structured and elegant while adding a sense of professional magazine style to it. The beautiful typography and subtle colors further elevate the reading experience of your site visitors, which helps to reduce the bounce rate and leads to better engagement. You can also customize the site with a classy logo, header image, and featured post slider.

5. Neve

Neve is a highly customizable and fast multi-purpose WordPress theme. It is ideal for small businesses, freelancers, bloggers, personal portfolios, and more. The theme is AMP-optimized, responsive, and lightweight, which means that it will load within seconds on any device. While Neve has a minimalist design, the theme can be customized in any way you want to make the most of your website.

You can use most of the popular page builders with Neve, such as Gutenberg Elementor, SiteOrigin, Beaver Builder, etc. It is also compatible with WooCommerce, so new entrepreneurs looking to sell their products online can also benefit from the theme. There are many starter templates and customization options in Neve. It allows you to personalize the typography, colors, button styles, header/footer scripts, and more. You can also go for the Pro version for more custom layouts and features.

6. Foodica

Foodica is an ideal WordPress theme for food bloggers and recipe websites. Yet the main drawback of the theme is that it comes with basic customization features only and the advanced options are available to the Pro version only. The Lite version can still be a good choice for those who are looking for WooCommerce integration and a simple blog layout.

There are no starter templates in Foodica though. You will need to customize the site using a page builder, such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, or Visual Composer. This may seem a bit confusing for those who want to get started with their blog quickly without having to tweak around the settings and layout much. Foodica comes with the unique Recipe Card feature though; this can be very beneficial for those who want to share food recipes with their followers.

7. NewsCard

NewsCard is a responsive WordPress theme specially designed for magazines and news sites. It suits food, fashion, travel, photography, and sports bloggers as well, and can be customized as a personal or photo blog too. It has an interesting Top Stories section on the top that features the latest posts scrolling across the page. NewsCard offers a single blog layout by default; you will need to install the One Click Demo Import companion plugin for installing more layouts.

You can also upgrade to NewsCard Pro for more front-page templates, sidebar page layouts, header options, banner slider features, and more. Yet the free version of the theme also allows you to customize almost all the elements on the page to get a preferred look. You will need to tweak a few theme editor settings to add custom ads on the header though.

8. Clean Gallery

Clean Gallery is an elegant and responsive WordPress blog theme that gives your website an eye-catching and fresh look. It features a gallery-style layout and minimalistic interface. This makes Clean Gallery ideal for photobloggers, fashion bloggers, food bloggers, and more. All the options are built into the theme Customizer, so personalizing the website does not require much expertise either.

You can easily customize the widgets in the theme using the Widget Context companion plugin and add author info or ads as needed. Adding links to social media profiles to the header is also very easy. Clean Gallery even allows adding a custom ad to the header, but you will need to integrate that into the header code via Theme Editor. For beginners, customizing the header with an image and logo, and keeping the ads to the sidebar would be better. There is a Pro version available for more features as well.

9. OceanWP

OceanWP is a popular WordPress theme that is known for its highly extendable features. The lightweight and responsive theme ensures that your website loads on any device in the blink of an eye. You can create beautiful and professional blogs and portfolios using the theme. It comes with WooCommerce integration options as well, which makes OceanWP a good choice for online storefronts.

You can use any preferred page builder with OceanWP, such as Brizy, Visual Composer, Elementor, Beaver Builder, or SiteOrigin to create a stunning website within minutes. It comes with many website templates that allow you to choose one that suits your needs. The one-page blogger template is highly preferred by news sites and avid bloggers. You can customize the colors, typography, menus, and more. There is a Pro version available as well to add more features to the pack.

10. Writers Blogily

Writers Blogily is an SEO-optimized WordPress theme made for bloggers and journalists. The theme is fully responsive and loads quickly on any device. It has lots of advertisement space as well and allows you to customize almost all the aspects of the theme. The minimalistic and single-page layout makes it a good choice for writing blogs on any preferred niche, be it food, travel, fashion, lifestyle, or anything else.

The Superb Helper companion plugin makes it easy to install the required elements and customize the site the way you want. It is also very easy to integrate social media buttons to posts so that your readers can share the content with others. You can even go for the Premium version of Writers Blogily for more features like custom slideshows, Google fonts, sidebar and blog feed color options, and page builder integration.

Get the Best Free WordPress Blog Theme

There is no answer to the “best” free WordPress blog theme in today’s era. There are millions of free themes out there and one that suits a website may not be ideal for another one. So the decision depends upon your needs and preferences.

The above-mentioned free themes as just a few of the most trending ones today. As these are free, you can try them out on your site and see which one suits you in the best way. If you want, you can go for their premium versions as well for the added features and customization options. Just make sure that importing demo content does not remove or overwrite the existing content on your site.

How to Install a WordPress Blog Theme

Use the download link provided for each of the free themes to download the theme from WordPress.org in ZIP format. Do not extract the files; go to the Appearance tab and click on Themes in the WP dashboard of your website. Then click on the Add New button, followed by Upload Theme. Then click on Choose File, select the downloaded ZIP file, and click on Install Now to upload the theme to your website.

You can also use the Search themes… box on the right end to look for the theme when on the Add New page under Themes. After finding the theme you need, click on Install, followed by Activate and the theme will be installed on your website. You can start customizing the theme using the Customizer option or follow the theme instructions for the same. Feel free to get in touch with our team if you need any help with customizing your site.