7 Best Free WordPress Blog Themes 2022
Best Free WordPress Blog Themes
WordPress is fantastic because it’s open-source and free to use. There’s no need to spend a fortune on your website, you just need a domain and server in order to create something unique, functional, and attractive.
Of course, to enable WordPress to live up to its potential as the basis for an exquisite website, you’ll need a WordPress theme.
For many beginning bloggers — and experienced ones, too, for that matter — a pricey theme is just not on the cards. Unless and until your blog is producing sufficient income, it can be hard to justify the expense of a premium theme.
If you want to start a blog without spending a lot of cash, there’s some good news. You can find plenty of WordPress themes created just for bloggers and they are all absolutely free!
7 Best Themes At a Glance
We’ve put together a list of some of our favorite free WordPress blog themes. We’ve been looking for sites that make it easy to use because quality, flexibility and ease-of-use are really important to us. The themes had to be clean, content-focused, and well-coded. And we’re sure that no matter what niche you’re blogging in, you’ll find a theme here that will work for you.
- Chic Lite
- Hemingway
- Hestia
- Bard
- Everly Lite
- Period
Let’s get started. 🙂
1. Chic Lite
Chic Lite is a feminine, minimalist, and visually appealing theme. It’s a strong choice if you plan to create a lifestyle, fashion, or beauty blog.
This theme is particularly useful if you plan on sharing many different types of content. For example, in addition to the customization options for your posts, there are also sections for social media and email campaign integrations. You can also personalize your blog with your brand colors and chosen fonts. Another notable feature is the 22 included widgets which include an advertisement widget so that you can strategically place ads within your content.
When it comes to free blog themes, Chic Lite isn’t the most versatile or the most customizable. However, if you’re looking to create a specific aesthetic for your fashion or beauty blog, it might be the best option.
2. Hemingway
If you’re looking for something simple that speaks to the novelist in you, the Hemingway WordPress theme is a fantastic choice. It’s easy on the eyes and minimalist — and for good reason.
The intention of this theme is to put your words front and center. This is an ideal choice for those who regularly blog essays or topical pieces. It offers a clean layout that doesn’t get in the way of what you have to say. Rather, it acts as an elegant frame for your words and photos. This responsive, two-column theme was built specifically with bloggers in mind but doesn’t shy away from high-quality graphics support.
Hemingway can be updated and customized using Gutenberg or popular page builder plugins. It supports a full-width header image that immediately reels visitors in and it employs parallax scrolling for added interest. Add a custom logo, accent color, and add image widgets for your accounts on Flickr, Instagram, or even Dribbble. Hemingway also comes with page templates so you can further customize the look and feel of your site.
3. Hestia
If you’re looking for a simple theme for your blog, Hestia fits the bill nicely.
The theme has a modern, material design and comes with plenty of starter sites to speed up the design process. It’s a one-page theme so you can set up your website fairly quickly. It’s also compatible with popular page builder plugins so you can build pages and customize your blog post layout without having to learn code.
Hestia allows you to customize every aspect of your website. You can change colors, fonts, and upload your logo, and more. It’s perfect for anyone who wants complete control over their site’s design. You’ll also find mega menus and you can translate the theme into any language. Plus, the theme integrates with WooCommerce, making it easy to add eCommerce functions to your blog if needed.
4. Author
Author is a dual-toned theme that was created specifically for reading and readers. Featuring a dark sidebar with a light-toned main body section, Author provides sufficient visual contrast between the sidebar and body sections to draw your visitor’s eye straight to your written and featured content.
Coded to be light, fast, and responsive, this theme features conditional loading and minified scripts and stylesheets to improve the way your site loads and performs in any browser. Responsive and designed with an eye towards accessibility for viewers with disabilities, the theme offers an adaptable layout to improve and enhance your user’s experience on your site.
5. Bard
The Bard theme touts itself as a beautiful theme and with good reason.
Stunning imagery, minimal and clean design, and elegant typography will make your blog a true pleasure to read. This theme uses a grid-based layout so you can easily share your most recent stories and add plenty of widgets to the sidebar so your readers can learn more about you. This includes a social widget, author profile widget, social media feeds, email widget, and more.
Bard works perfectly with all major drag-and-drop page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, SiteOrigin, and Divi. It is also WooCommerce compatible, should you want to add an online store to your blog. In addition to that, the theme can be monetized with ads as it comes with three promo boxes that can be used to display banner ads.
6. Everly Lite
Everly Lite is the free version of the premium Everly theme from Premium Coding.
You’ll get some Customizer options in Everly Lite to personalize your blog. You’ll be able to upload a favicon or “browser icon” image and crop that file as you like for display in tabs and mobile browsers. Additionally, you can add and configure widgets for several possible sidebar, footer, and header-adjacent displays.
The theme also has its own “Theme Options” submenu under the Appearance menu in your WordPress Dashboard. There, you’ll find options for typography display (including easy access to numerous Google Web Fonts), including font faces, size, and color options for all major text-based elements, from body text to subheadings. You can also swap out the “Everly’s Blog” ribbon logo for your own files here.
One other notable feature of Everly Lite is the ability to swap between a default layout and a grid-based layout. The grid approach is great for magazine-style blogs, of course, and leads to a crisper display of multiple pieces of content at the same level of hierarchy or importance on your site. Photographers and other visually intensive niches could make valuable use of this layout.
7. Period
Most of our free blog themes in this collection are based on light minimalist color schemes. Period is a bit different, as it’s based on a darker palette, yet still retains the same clean and readable aesthetic as the lighter-toned themes on our list. The dark tones of the theme’s palette make it well-suited for professional services and corporate blogs, as well as blogs in conservative niches such as finance or law.
The theme features optional layouts, including full-width, one-column, and two-column styles. You can also create optional descriptive blocks of text for gallery, category, tag, and author pages for enhanced SEO, improved navigation, and a better user experience. Period is also WooCommerce-friendly and you can create an online shop as part of your blog relatively easily.
User reviews praise Period for its commitment to accessibility, baked-in SEO, and smooth integration with caching and minification plugins.
