Minimalist WordPress Themes are growing in popularity these days as more and more businesses and individuals are looking to create a simple and minimal look and feel for their brand. Minimalist websites are timeless as they are built on solid design foundations and aren’t affected by short-term design trends and fads. With so many Minimal Style WordPress Themes out there it’s sometimes hard to find the one you’re looking for, here are some of my favorites based on quality, creativity and functionality.
There are tons of free WordPress themes out there but if you’re looking for a unique theme I’d stay away from the freebies as they’re usually of a lower quality and everyone is already using them. You can get a premium WordPress theme for just $35 which is a pretty good investment if you ask me. Many of these themes are highly customizable as well which will allow you to get a bit creative and customize your site layout and design to fit your individual needs. You can change the colour schemes, layouts, images and backgrounds without writing any code. You can read more details about any of the minimalist themes below or buy them by simply clicking on the theme images. Hope that helps you on your search for the perfect minimalist WordPress theme.
Classica – Minimalist WordPress Theme: $35
A beautiful and simple minimalist WordPress theme that allows you to make your content the focal point of your website. This theme features a clean black font on a white background with plenty of room to showcase your work. This is a simple yet powerful theme that’s great for portfolio websites or design or art related news and blog sites.
Vulcan – Minimal Business WordPress Theme: $35
A minimalist business theme, Vulcan gives you the simplicity of a minimal theme along with the polish of a modern business website. This flexible theme is great for almost any type of website with many customizations. You can choose between five colour schemes and several widgets and layouts making it a solid theme for anyone looking for a clean and simple look and feel.
Atlantica – Premium Minimalist WordPress Theme: $30
A complete WordPress theme with a clean and crisp style, best suited for portfolio websites but also great for almost any other type of website that needs a beautiful layout. Artists, designers, photographers and other creatives will love this theme as it’s quite image heavy but it also balances typographical elements nicely. This theme is loaded with detailed features including: 6 unique skins, jQuery lightbox, homepage slider and you can even upload your own favicon for those of you who worry about the smaller details.
Concept – Clean Minimal WordPress Theme: $30
A clean and polished theme that can be used for just about any type of website that needs a clean-cut layout. This theme comes complete with 6 uniquely styles skins, custom admin panel, clean commented code, jQuery lightbox, and optional sIFR custom font rendering to add some nice typography to your site. A solid and flexible multipurpose theme.
Minimal – Minimalist WordPress Theme: $25
This theme is a minimal as they come. It relies much on typography rather than images which gives it a very monotone minimalist look and feel. Great for writers and bloggers who aren’t big on images and who prefer to let their content do the talking. This theme come with custom fading taglines, custom admin panel, social media widgets and even a contact form to allow people to email you with ease. A theme for those who truly love minimalism.
Folioway – Minimalist Portfolio WordPress Theme: $35
A clean and elegant theme with loads of useful features. This theme uses whitespace to bring attention to your images. Features include unlimited colours, sliders, patterns, custom fonts using Cufon as well as auto generated thumbnail images. A simple yet flexible theme suitable for many different websites.
Repro – Minimalist Magazine WordPress Theme: $35
A great minimal magazine style theme suitable for content producers at all levels including online magazines, bloggers and newspapers. It looks beautiful by default but you can always add your own touch to this theme via its many customisable features including: 8 custom widgets, social media integration, unlimited colour schemes and you can even upload your own logo.
Vilisya – Minimalist Business WordPress Theme: $35
A clean and minimal corporate theme that’s suitable for professional corporate websites. It comes with 6 colour schemes, a jQuery image slider, Cufon font replacement, contact form, automatic image thumbnails, a custom admin panel along with great SEO Optimization. A powerful theme with everything you need for your ultimate business website.
Elegance – Minimalist WordPress Theme: $35
A simple and beautifully crafted WordPress theme that’s great for portfolios, business websites, blogs and magazines. A large image slider with custom editable type fills the homepage and the 4 different template layouts allow you to tweak the design to suit your purpose. Complete with Cufon font replacement, lightbox image support, custom widgets and a multi level drop-down menu this is a powerful yet beautiful theme.
Air – Great Minimalist WordPress Theme: $35
This is a simple but functional WordPress theme that’s probably best for use as an online portfolio although it could very easily be used for other types of websites too. You can choose from a white, grey or black background colour along with several different grid layouts for your portfolio designs. There are even a few custom blog layouts to choose from if you’re looking to add a blog to your site. A nice and simple theme that’s definitely worth a look.
Chalong – Clean and Simple WordPress Theme: $35
A clean and simple theme with a bit of a corporate look and feel. This theme is great for professional business websites and best of all it comes jam-packed with heaps of the latest WordPress features including: custom post type, unlimited colour schemes, custom admin panel, 7 slider styles and many social media widgets. Don’t be fooled, this theme isn’t as simple as it looks!
Gridlocked – Minimal Portfolio WordPress Theme: $35
This is an interesting theme as it uses a grid based layout which actually shuffles dynamically depending on the size of the browser window. This highly versatile theme is perfect for a creative portfolio or even an image rich blog as you can choose to focus on your work or your blogs or both! Gridlocked comes with a sortable portfolio, post format support, widgets and audio and video support. A truly versatile minimalist theme.
The Agency – Premium Minimal WordPress Theme: $35
A premium WordPress theme that has a clean and minimal design, perfect for design agencies that want to showcase their work, publish projects and write blog posts, news and articles. It’s easy to use and has many great features including: sophisticated image gallery with image loading and beautiful hover animations. The individual project page is perfectly suited to agencies as it allows you to include details such as client role, type and URL.
Minimalisto – Clean Business WordPress Theme: $35
A clean business theme suitable for virtually any business website. Minimalisto has many great features that allow you to customise your website including: 2 skins, custom admin panel, jQuery image slider, multi-level drop-down menu, widgets, useful shortcodes, 9 page layouts and great documentation. A clean and simple theme with some solid functionality.
Adham Dannaway
Web Designer and Front End Developer with a passion for web design, coding, blogging, WordPress and chewing gum. Check out my web design portfolio and follow me on Twitter and Facebook!
Wow, some amazing WordPress templates here! I really love the first one – it’s definitely worth its value!
Thanks!
Yeh, the first one is my favourite too, lots of features for such a simple theme 🙂
I’d like Repro.
Sadly this is all premium themes. But it’s worth it to buy one!
Great post! This is a really helpful list for people who are in the process of redesigning their WordPress sites.]
Another great minimalist theme for the list is Space. It does a good job of removing both unnecessary design elements and WordPress features, leaving users with clear and easy to read comment.
You can see Space in action here:
http://www.getspace.org/
hi adham,
i am trying to find a wordpress theme that will allow me to make my site look like this: http://www.maitriyoga.com/
basically, i want a box in the middle of the screen with my logo on one side and some links on the the other. very clean, minimal (non-blog looking). do you know if there is a theme/template to dot this or is it only going to be achievable with a custom design?
any help is much appreciated as i am very new to all of this.
thanks so much,
debra warshaw
@Debra – That’s a tough one. I suggest searching themeforest for “minimal photography wordpress theme”. Here’s one I found that might work – http://bit.ly/qRJidC
Good luck 🙂
thank you adham! this looks nice. i will investigate it.
cheers!
debra