I love minimalism, from furniture, to my desk. I only have a desk with a Mac Pro, monitor, keyboard and a mouse on my desk. My walls are white with couple of photos here and there. Minimalism is a trend. I would like to show you couple of the Best Free Minimalist WordPress Themes featuring minimalism trend.
What is really interesting about minimalist themes is that they are SEO beasts. You see, unlike many ThemeForest themes, minimalist themes are fast. Boy are they fast. A Reason is pretty simple. They don’t feature modern visual effects, they don’t feature many font types and they are usually not built around a Visual Composer which is like a standard on ThemeForest market.
Minimalist themes feature only the most essential CSS, JS and focus on beautiful fonts and nice images. What’s more, they can be further stripped to show only white space and very little post meta. When you are doing any modification to any theme, make sure you create a child theme, just so you preserve your modifications once the update is available.
Now, talking about SEO, speed is a ranking factor for Google search engine. If your website is slow, it will rank below the websites which has a similar rank, but is faster to load.
Second benefit of minimalist themes is the content. Themes with minimal design tend to focus on content and images being featured. They make your content really stand out. And if you manage to procure a great content, you have a potential to increase social interaction, again improving your off-site SEO.
Best Free Minimalist WordPress Themes
Tonal
Tonal is a theme from Automattic which is surrounded by a minimal design with big featured images. It supports post formats and it can both videos and images at full width. One of the best features which is unique is ability for theme to adapt to the background. What that means is that once you set up a background color, it will automatically modify fonts and other aspects to make readability with custom background color superb.
Grid Theme
Grid theme is perfect WordPress theme which has a minimalistic design. It’s perfect for the creative people who can, using just the right images boost not only their bounce rate, but average seconds on site. You see, if you put just the right images as a featured images, you will increase you click through rate. But, you need a perfect theme which has those features.
Grid Theme is a perfect WordPress theme that is focused on minimalistic design. You can easily use it for creative work, but it can work wonders for a magazine type of content.
This theme shares many similarities with Pinterest and if you can use it’s advantages, your can make your website really successful.
Casper
Casper is a very interesting theme. It is essentially a port of Ghost default theme but with WordPress twist. It’s based on Underscores and can be customized via WordPress customizer. Uploading your logo, setting up custom header and background images, text and social links will not be a problem.
Hellish Simplicity
Hellish Simplicity was created by Ryan Hellyer. It’s very clean, mobile optimized with a red touch which can be changed. You can easily update text in a header with a WordPress customizer.
Writr
If you are a writer and are looking for a theme, then Writr is is made for you. It focuses on the most important aspect for the writers. Typography and images.
A theme features left sidebar with the author box on top of it. It also features just perfect ratio between text and featured images. The menu is on the left side just next to the author box. Theme can be customized easily and in addition, you can focus on writing without worrying about how it will look on the front end.
Silvia
Silvia, is a great minimalist WordPress theme optimized for Photographers. One great advantage it has for photographers is ability showcase EXIF data. In addition, it’s fully responsive with CSS3 and HTML 5 technologies aboard. Macbook users will love the support for retina. Images will look beautifully.
It offers a clean, yet minimal look. It will lovely on type of photography site or even a blog. Design is special, so in case you like it, this one is for you. It also features galleries.
Because it features galleries you can use it to showcase your portfolio. The only color featured is black and white making your pictures stand our. You can easily change the color via custom CSS if you prefer other colors.
Spacious
Spacious is one of the most interesting free WordPress themes. It offeres great features for personal bloggingg. The thing is, it can also be used for business or portfolio related websites.
It offeres a 4 a 4 page layouts, 13 widget areas even custom widgets and so much more. Design of the theme is really nice and modern. Businesses can present information in a beautfull way, focsuing on the content.
ForeOverWood
ForeOverWood is a retina optimized and fully responsive minimalist theme which. Theme focus is on providing premium qualities completly free of charge. Theme features both, column and masonry layout for your blog. Masonry layout is great for photographers as well as bloggers. You can present you image in a widget above the content with a call to action button.
This theme can be used also for portfolio websites. It features many different color schemes you can choose.
Imbalance
Imbalance is a minimalistic photography WordPress theme. Theme is provided free of charge, but don’t think that it lacks features. You can make your content shine with Imbalnace theme. What about the features? Imbalance provides a masonry layout with a great focus on making your images stand out..
With a masonry layout you can create a beautifull portfolio website. The imbalance theme is light and fast to load which is great for SEO and onlike it’s name implies it’s pretty balanced WordPress theme. In fact it’s one of the best free themes.
Freedom
Freedom is great looking WordPress theme with many features of minimalism. Theme homepage is looking great as it makes your content stand out by using images with a hoover effect. What I lahko about the theme is that you can customize the look, if your prefer minimalistic style, you will love it. Freedom theme features beautifull typography and if you decide to put a personal touch, you add a background image. You can set side sidebar to the left side, right side or completly remove it and use a full width for your content.
The homepage has a slider area which you can use. Freedom is available in two versions: Free or PRO with additional features.
Sparkling
Sparkling was created by Colorlib and is completly free. Theme is fully responsive with minimal and clean design. Sparkling theme is a multi purpose and you can create beautifull websites. It can be used for websites in design, health, travel, business, art or other industries. Some of the features are: Infinite scroll, featured slider, fontawesome support, has unlimited color options. Sparkling theme is free.
Brix
Brix is a minimalist WordPress theme. It features responsive design with HTML5 and CSS3 technologies. It is a multi-purpose and can be features for many types of website. The theme also offers great SEO compatibility and provides all the necessary user experience to make the user stick around. Brix is very fast and because it’s well optimized it enables you to score A grade easily with many speed test test’s. It offers a slider, many widget areas and has a lot of configuraton options.
Theme is available in two versions, free and a premium witch offers support and additional features.
Editor
Editor WordPress theme is perfect for writer’s or bloggers with a minimalist design. Theme is modern with completely responsive design featuring HTML5 and CSS3. The homepage features a left sidebar which includes the menu as well.
The whole focus of the theme is to make your content stand out. It features beautifull typography whcih offers great reading experiance on a computer screen but just as well on mobile devices like mobile phones or tablets. What I like is that is JatPack enabled, editor features many JetPack modules. Editor is availbale from WordPress theme repository for free.
Semicolon
Semicolon was created by Konstantin Kovshenin. This is a true minimalist magazine theme based on the s starter theme. It’s has responsive design with a grid layout. Typography is clean and is easy to read. It shines with JetPack support as you can use featured module to present your present your arcticles.
Conclusion
WordPress is amazing, it can be used for amazing designs but you can also use it for minimalist style. I hope you ‘ll find this list of best free minimalist WordPress theme appealing and will some for your project.
If you find a theme that you like and is not featured here please share with our friends on the comment section below.