WordPress is a website hosting platform used by millions of bloggers because of its versatility and cost-effectiveness.
A large advantage of WordPress are the numerous themes to choose from. In order to take advantage of these themes, you’ll need a hosting account and a domain name (grab a FREE domain from GoDaddy here ).
In this post we’re going to save you plenty of research time by sharing our top theme pick, plus a smattering of other options.
Let’s dig in!
Why the Right Theme Is Important
WordPress allows you to easily create a website with multiple themes to choose from. The right theme is so important because it’s the first thing readers will come across. If the aesthetic isn’t on point, chances are readers will move onto a different site that is.
Additionally, each of them offers different loading times, browser support, and customization allowed. These are all extra factors to keep in mind since it will affect the way your site is viewed across different devices. Understanding the different themes prior to creating your site will result in an organized, effective web page.
Here are some things you want to consider when browsing WordPress themes for writers:
- User Experience. Web designers and end-users would both agree that user experience is key to a successful site. Your site should be not only visually appealing but also easy to read and navigate. Choose a theme with beautiful typography, eye-catching (or at least customizable) colors, and a flexible layout.
- Responsive Web Design. You need to realize that not everyone will be using the website on the same browser or device. That’s the reason why your theme should have a responsive web design. Before you settle on a theme, test it on multiple devices to ensure that it will appeal to everyone.
- Fast Loading Times. Choose a theme with quick loading times on all devices. Fortunately, there are numerous online speed tests to help you find out how quickly the site loads. Avoid using themes that are likely to take a long time to load.
At the end of the day, you want to have a website that loads quickly, is easy to customize, has good cross-browser support, and a responsive design.
These elements can make the difference between a visitor that reads your blog (and returns) vs one that bounces.
Our Top WordPress Theme Recommendation
Spend a few minutes searching and you’ll discover that there is no shortage of WordPress themes to choose from. So how on earth are you supposed to decide which one is right for you?
A little further down in this post you’l find a list of unique themes (both free and premium) that you can use to get your blog started.
But in the interest of saving you both time and effort, we’re going to share our top recommendation first.
If you’re building your blog on WordPress, there is no better place to start that the combination of Generate Press & Elementor Page Builder. Blogelina is built using this combination and we’ve also built dozens of websites for clients using these tools as well.
GeneratePress
There are plenty of reasons why we think GeneratePress is the best WordPress theme for bloggers:
- It’s lightweight and fast
- It’s highly customizable
- It comes with a site library that makes getting started even easier
- You can use it on as many websites as you’d like
- The support and amazing
- It works beautifully with the Elementor Page Builder
Elementor Page Builder
Like the GeneratePress theme, this site uses Elementor for many of the custom-designed pages and we’ve used the plugin on more client websites than we can count.
Elementor is a visual page builder that makes customizing your website super easy. Here are some of the key features:
- It allows you to design your website visually using a “what you see is what you get” editor (WYSIWYG).
- Elementor is as close as you’ll get to an all in one solution that includes 80+ design elements.
- t comes with tons of premade layouts and sections that will dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to build a unique and beautiful blog.
Premium WordPress Themes for Bloggers
Auteur
Auteur is a well-designed theme that suits the style of bloggers, writing authors, book distributors, book stores, reviewers, and publishers. The theme has more than 15 layouts, which you can use to make your blog more attractive.
The theme also has four ready-made homepages with the following uses:
- Book store
- Introducing authors
- Reviewing a book site
- Introducing a new book
These four categories are made of different elements built to meet the user’s requirements.
The Auteur theme is a great way to get your blog started in just one-click. It is compatible with WooCommerce, so you can utilize this theme for a website to sell your merchandise.
Additionally, Auteur is compatible with the WPBakery Page builder, so organizing your content and layout is easy. Apart from its elegant design, the theme also features a seamless interface that offers a great user experience. This can be a great advantage when you are trying to increase traffic to your page.
The license for Auteur costs $60 for six months of support.
Divi
Divi is one of the most popular WordPress themes that allow you to build your blog using a visual editor. These types of themes are sometimes also referred to as page-builder themes. They come with a level of complexity, meaning there is a learning curve to using them.
However, page-building themes are great for bloggers who require a high degree of personalization over their website’s layout and design. Divi is also popular among freelancers and agencies that create websites for their clients because it makes website construction faster and efficient. It is also affordable, and you can build multiple websites on a single membership.
Divi is especially useful when you are looking to build a website, but you don’t have much coding experience. It provides an option to drag and drop elements of the front end side of your website. It also allows you to create and personalize your website using intuitive visual control, where you can see the results instantly.
This theme isn’t only about making beautiful websites, it’s responsive, and you can also add their custom CSS. It allows you to manage your whole website design using global elements as well as wide design settings.
You can purchase yearly access to Divi and Elegant Themes for $89 or lifetime access at $249. Both packages offer hundreds of website packs, premium support, product updates, unlimited website usage as well as risk-free guarantee.
CheerUp
The CheerUp WordPress theme will make you overjoyed due to its unique design options. This theme works perfectly for online magazines, personal blogs, or online shops. It has been designed to be fully responsive and easy to customize.
You can use this theme for any website, regardless of whether it requires a lot of functionality or minimalistic design. The theme has more than 200 layout options, six outstanding demos, and countless slider, foot, and post styles.
The CheerUp theme also comes with simple branding options and multiple colors and fonts, so that any website created using this theme can match the user’s persona. It is also search engine optimized, so your website is likely to rank well in your search engine results.
Since social media is an essential part of driving traffic to your site, this theme allows for essential social media elements and email marketing. This is possible because it is compatible with Contact Form 7 and Mail Chimp.
The theme comes with full integration with the WooCommerce plugin, one of the best platforms for online shops, to support e-commerce businesses. The advantage of this plugin is that it makes it possible to set up a shop in a matter of minutes.
CheerUp has custom widgets, including Instagram Footer Widget, About Me Widget, Latest, and Popular Post Widget. You can improve the speed of the website pages to create a high-performing website with chic design. It works impeccably on all modern desktop browsers, smartphones, and tablets. This theme is known for offering a great user experience.
CheerUp costs $76.3 for 12-month support and a regular license.
Monochrome
Monochrome is a great theme for you if you’re looking for a visually strong presence that is appealing to the eye. It works best when you’re trying to keep your website clean and attract the readers’ attention. The theme is powered by Genesis to work for you whenever you want to present great content in a powerful and classy minimal design. The theme strategically utilizes whitespace and profound typography to bring out its style.
Monochrome gives you the flexibility you require for your digital space. It gives you a vast showroom to let your images do the talking. The theme provides you the option to add a full-stretch header image for your blog pages. It also has WooCommerce plugins in case you want to sell products or affiliate links. The theme also comes with pricing page templates with multiple column classes as well as templates for contact, author, and landing pages.
The Monochrome theme includes a mobile-responsive design, which ensures that your website is appealing across various mobile devices. This mobile-friendly design, together with the clean code used in constructing the website, ranks highly in search engine results. The theme also comes with great security, one-click updates as well as super-fast page load times. The Monochrome theme also has support and documentation available.
You can purchase the Monochrome theme for a one-time fee of $129.95 (including the Genesis Framework).
Narratium
Narratium WordPress theme is modern, highly responsive, and created for simplicity. It’s a great theme for use by bloggers and writers. The configuration of this theme uses WordPress functions to make managing easier. It helps avoid confusion and struggle involved in dealing with third configuration panels that become useless over time. This is why the theme is ideal for both beginners and advanced blog users.
Narratium has multiple benefits. Its Dynamic Navigation AJAX is easy to activate and helps to accelerate the navigation through the website. The theme introduces text format tags for titles and subtitles, which allows you to use text formats such as color, bold, and italics to your post. You can also set up your preferred color scheme for the entire theme and a specific post. This makes the website quite personalized, allowing you to stand out among other bloggers.
Narratium gives you the option to post co-authors because it is becoming increasingly common to find articles written by different authors in conjunction. You can also add an image for each category on your site so that the image appears at the start of the category.
Furthermore, the theme allows you to add a video instead of an image for each post. Other features include a word count tool to automatically indicate how many words you have written in each article, icons to display on menus, and easy-to-share social media platforms.
Narratium costs $39 for 6-month support.
Soledad
Soledad is a WordPress theme ideal for numerous uses, but especially start-up businesses, agencies, and companies. It’s also very useful for freelancers looking for a professional site to display their services and projects with a fully responsive experience. The theme has a creative, minimal, and neat design that is carefully created with a sharp user experience.
Soledad comes with WordPress page builder known as WPBakery Page Builder plugin and ACF Pro used for theme setting. The theme also comes with multiple layouts for different designs customizable to fit your business. For $59, you receive 6-month support from PenciDesign, feature updates, theme hosting offer, and quality checks from Envato.
Free WordPress Themes
LoveCraft
Lovecraft is one of the best free WordPress themes, and it’s no surprise that it has more than 10,000 active installations. The theme has a two-column design. It features full-width header images replaced with post thumbnail at the top of every page or post.
Lovecraft is customizable with numerous flexible designs to create a strong first impression for your guests. The theme makes your content look appealing by using gorgeous fonts, stylish block quotes, and custom accent colors. Additionally, the Lovecraft theme offers custom logo support, editing style support, recent posts, and recent comments widgets with thumbnails.
In terms of performance, the theme is highly responsive because it is built to scale gracefully to any screen size, from a 3.5” smartphone to a 27” desktop display. It also features the Jetpacks Infinite Scroll function, meaning that new posts are loaded as soon as you reach the bottom of the page.
Chosen
Chosen is a popular theme among bloggers who want their blogs to have a bold and minimalist look. This is always a great way to capture the attention of your audience. The theme presents your content in a simple and uncluttered manner on all devices; smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
As a free theme, Chosen is currently used in numerous niche, including business, food, gaming, travel, and business. It can also be used in podcasts, videos, and personal resumes. The new WooCommerce support means that it can also be used for eCommerce websites. The theme is actively maintained, regularly updates before major releases, and is thoroughly tested using thousands of live websites.
Hoffman
Hoffman is a beautifully designed and thought-through theme that is highly responsive to devices of all sizes. It uses icon fonts and a galley post format to ensure that it is appealing to the eye. What’s more, apart from its beautiful standards, the theme also allows you to customize it. You can add a personal touch by selecting your preferred accent or background color. You may also add a background image.
Hoffman’s theme is also integrated with built-in support for Jetpack’s infinite scroll function. It includes custom widgets that show your recent posts and comments. Some of the theme’s extra features include support for post editor styles, support for theme translation, and menu location for links to social media accounts. It also includes two-page templates, which are Classic Editor and Gutenberg.
The Hoffman theme can be downloaded for free on WordPress.
Write
The Write WordPress theme is clean and ideal for writers. It is entirely responsive and includes several options for modifying your site and making this theme more personalized. However, it is worth noting that this theme is meant to keep the decorations minimal so that the readers can focus on the blog content. It offers a satisfying reading experience on all devices, but especially mobile phones.
You will find several different widget areas such as an Instagram widget, sticky sidebar, and the standard sidebar. Other areas include footer left, footer right 1, footer right two as well as footer right 3. Write also offers multilingual support with adjustments made to support both English and Japanese, and several menu locations. The available page templates include a normal page, full-width page, and no sidebar page.
Integer
Integer is a well-organized theme with a minimal design. It features a single-column layout and neat typography. This makes it easier for your readers to focus on your content. Other features of the Integer theme that make it well-suited to tell your stories and reach your blogging goals include full-width images and a section for newsletter subscription forms.
Every detail on this theme, including the title, post-Meta, and screen-wide thumbnail, is designed to make your blog engaging. It’s also fully responsive, supports many post type formats, and allows the use of custom colors and backgrounds.
Mallow
Mallow is a classy and flexible theme that structures a standard two-column scheme with bold typography and big featured images. Its flexibility allows for a wide range of uses such as photo blogging, online magazines, food, and blogging sites. It can also be used for creating blogs, including travel, lifestyle, marketing, fitness, personal brand, design, and more. The theme is easy to modify and allows you to customize your brand more by allowing the use of a custom logo.
The Mallow theme also features a fully responsive functionality. The images will appear beautiful and crisp on all devices, including the smallest of smartphones. Its user experience is optimized with fast loading speeds and simple code meant to cause no complications.
Furthermore, Mallow comes with browser support on Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox, so you can use the blog as intended. Lastly, the theme is coded with SEO best practices considered to rank well in the search results.
Some Final Thoughts
With the WordPress themes listed above, you can make your dream website that will be appealing and highly efficient. Check the one that appeals to you most in terms of functionality and budget.
Remember, a great WordPress theme is an investment that will go a long way in attracting more visitors to your website.