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40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

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High quality free Wordpress Themes have become harder and harder to find in the past year, with the influx of premium themes, more and more designers and developers are selling themes (and rightly so, they do amazing work). However, the quality of freely available themes has improved as well; in fact, some themes are very advanced and professional and can serve as a solid foundation for your next designs.

There are a lot of choices out there for someone wanting to choose a Wordpress theme for their blog. But, that aside, the quality is certainly there, and we are sure you will be impressed with this Wordpress theme compilation.

You may be interested in the following related posts:

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that Smashing Magazine has one of the most influential and popular Twitter accounts? Join our discussions and get updates about useful tools and resources — follow us on Twitter.]

Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

AppCloud Theme
A nice e-commerce WordPress theme with a clean and professional look. Built upon 960.gs, with an integrated slideshow, two layouts (horizontal and vertical) for app/gadget images. The theme also includes sections “Featured products” and “Top Selling” and a categorized products view.

Appcloud in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Berita (via ThemeCloset)
Berita is a minimalist corporate theme created for companies to prominently display their logo, but the theme could be used for any type of website. It’s a feature-rich theme with a preview slider on the front page and a robust theme administration page.

Berita in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Magazeen
Magazeen is a two-column theme released specifically for Smashing Magazine readers. The theme has some subtle enhancements that encourage looking at related and new posts, like a related posts drop-down effect for the category link.

Magazeen in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Mainstream Theme (via Wootheme)
You have the option of choosing from five different theme colors with Mainstream. Thumbnails are automatically resided and the sidebar is widgetized.

Mainstream in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Rusty Grunge
Rusty Grunge is a simple WordPress theme yet still gives you the “destroyed” look. This theme utilizes a fully-widgetized sidebar and has been downloaded over 28,000 times and is featured as a pre-installed theme on Dreamhost’s default installation of WordPress.

Rg in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Obscure WordPress Theme
A dark magazine WordPress theme suitable for any site niche; also a good fit for a community-based site.

Obscure2 in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Paper Wall
Smashing Magazine released the illustrated theme Paper Wall last month. The inspiration behind the Paper Wall theme was a designer’s desk, as designers typically put things on paper. It’s a two-column theme with many elements of paper: paper boards, peeling paper and paper “menus”.

Paperwall in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Gallery WordPress Theme
a beautiful, free, gallery-style Thematic child theme for WordPress, designed by Christopher Wallace especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. It is extremely flexible and can be used as a starting point for design galleries and portfolios.

Gall in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Cool Retro
A nice, clean illustrated WordPress theme with a retro-look and nice typography.

Coolretro in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Life Collage
Life Collage is a child theme of the Hybrid theme framework. It’s about getting back to the roots of blogging. About sharing our lives. And, about having a little fun while we do it.

Life in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Shalom Typo
This theme was designed for the typographic template contest at Smashing Magazine by the German designer David Hellmann. This WordPress theme is based upon this layout. A clean and nice typographic WordPress-theme.

Shalom in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Jungleland Theme (via Theme Lab)
The stylish browns give an earthy feel to this blog making it a good choice for those blogs focused on the environment and nature. It features a photo gallery and a sidebar menu

Jungleland-theme in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Monkeypr Theme (via Queness)
Monkeypr is a nicely designed and fun WordPress theme.

Monkeypr-theme in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Folio Elements Theme (via Press 75)
With its black background, Folio Elements theme will surely make your images and photographs noticed. There is no sidebar, no widgets, no list of categories, no place to comment and nowhere to search. However, if you are looking for a basic carousel-type theme with absolutely no basics, bells or whistles, then Folio Elements might be the one for you.

Folio-elements-theme in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

SimpleCart(js)
SimpleCart(js) is another child of the Thematic Wordpress framework. The theme requires WP E-Commerce and is a flexible way to showcase products with the grid framework. The theme features a rich wood background and simple white content area.

Simplecart in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Glassic
A simple clean WordPress theme with the focus on typography and simplicity. Released by Abdullah Ibrahim exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Glassic-release in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Zinepress Theme (via Well Medicatedi)
Zinepress is a two column magazine style theme. There is a nice sidebar with enough space for ads and for your widgets. It is hand coded and has valid XHTML STrict 1.0 and CSS Level 2.1. The developer has successfully tested this them with IE 6.0+, Firefox 2+, Opera 9+, Safari 3+, and Chrome 0.2+. Suggested Wordpress version is 2.7 or higher.

Zinepress-theme in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Futurosity Aperio Prototype
Futurosity Aperio is a clean straight-forward blog theme built on Sandbox

Aperio in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Futurosity Vero (via Theme Meme)
Built on Sandbox and Blueprint CSS framework, the Futurosity Vero is a minimalist theme. Near the top of your home page, your most recent and featured post will be displayed.

Fut in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

PolaroidPress (via Tutorial9)
PolaroidPress, as you might guess from the name, plays on the usage of “polaroids” in the theme that display your random images. It’s a simple two-column theme with an airy feel.

Polar in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

H5
The H5 theme is more of a proof-of-concept theme to show designers how to show theme designers how to design with HTML5 and CSS 2.1. It’s a bare-bones theme that’s perfect as a building block for creating your next Wordpress theme.

H5 in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Inuit (via CSS Reflex)
Inuit makes use of a lot of whitespace and preview images for each post on the homepage. The theme also comes integrated with Twitter and Flickr.

Inuit in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Wu Wei
Clean, modern and minimal. The theme was based on the Taoist concept of wu wei: knowing when to act, and knowing when not to act. The theme is built on the principles of the grid system.

Wuwei in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Cardeo Minimal
A minimal three-column theme with plenty of white space and gray text.

Cardeo in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Album Theme (by Allan Cole)
Auto-focus is a blog theme designed for photographers to showcase their work.

Auto-focus in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Mystique (by Digital Nature)
This sleek one column theme has a flexible-width, threaded comments, and an adjustable header.

Mystique in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Manifest
Manifest is a straight-forward one column blog. It has no widgets or sidebar, but gives you a nice clean approach that focuses on your content.

Manifest in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Debug Theme (by Joost de Valk)
When your WordPress installs fail and you need more information, the debug theme is perfect. On the home page, it displays the important URL’s, editor, memory setting, etc. On sub pages it shows the page type, all the query vars that are set and the SQL query for that particular page.

Debug in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Calmdream WordPress Theme
A very clean and simple layout for magazine layouts.

Calm in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Portfolio Theme (via WPESP)
Portfolio is a two column blog theme which can be described as a minimalist. This modifiable design will make your own portfolio look great!

Portfolio-theme in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Blog Theme
The Carrington Blog-style theme is filled with advanced features like widgetized sidebars, AJAX loading of content, stylish galleries, customizable headers and colors.

Carr in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Mobile Theme (via Carrington Themesl)
The Carrington Mobile has a beautiful design supporting advanced touch browsers (Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Pre).

Mob in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Pyrmont V2 Theme (via WP)
Pyrmont V2 is a two-column theme with a black background that could very well make your photographs and designs stand out.

Pyrmont-v2-theme in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Destyle Theme
Destyle is a magazine-style WordPress theme. This is another theme packed with useful features such as: multi-level superfish dropdown menu, ad management, predefined CSS styles, customa page templates, Twitter and Flick badges on sidebar and automatic image resizing.

Destyle-theme in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

ImpreZZ
A dark, three-column theme that gives the second column a third dimension.

Impr in 40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes

Would you like to see more similar lists on SM?

Your opinion is very important to us. There are literally hundreds of similar lists on various design blogs. We are trying to do our best to present you only the best of the best, collecting useful links over months. Would you like to see more similar lists in the future? Or should we drop lists altogether and focus on more original content?

The team here at Smashing Magazine. Mostly Sven & Vitaly.

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  1. 1
    Leland
    November 12th, 2009 9:13 am

    Thanks for including the Jungleland theme in yet another great WordPress theme list post from Smashing Mag. Just FYI, here’s the direct link to the theme page: http://www.themelab.com/2009/09/03/jungleland-free-wordpress-theme/

  2. 2
    Joshua
    November 12th, 2009 9:17 am

    Some awesome themes; keep it up guys!

  3. 3
    Esther
    November 12th, 2009 9:17 am

    It’s nice to see free high-quality templates but it’d be even better If we hadn’t seen them already (most of them have been featured here, on Smashing Magazine)

  4. 4
    Matt Propst
    November 12th, 2009 9:23 am

    Great list. I’m glad to see that it seems that the old trends of a theme being post after post of content that seemed to scroll forever are going away. Seeing these variety of ways to display content means designers can do what they love to do, come up with new and unique ways to give visitors content.

    -Matt

  5. 5
    Rob
    November 12th, 2009 9:25 am

    same old themes..almost all of these have been posted here or elsewhere , some are almost 2yrs old…
    can you say zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….?

    • 6
      Anggi@icreativelabs
      November 12th, 2009 10:17 am

      hihihihi :D You can check the new wordpress e-commerce theme, AppCloud.
      we have been launched in Oct 13, 2009
      i hope you love it, here you go : http://portfolio.icreativelabs.com/free-wordpress-e-commerce-theme-appcloud/

    • 7
      Chelle
      November 12th, 2009 11:19 am

      Seriously. I don’t even use wordpress but I like looking at new designs for anything to give me inspiration. I’m a fan of MovableType by SixApart and I tend to make full-blown layouts, not just a header and css…. I rarely see anything exciting anymore.

    • 8
      Matt
      November 13th, 2009 4:01 pm

      Agreed. Few of these are new, and many have been posted here and elsewhere. I was hoping to see more intelligent posts from Smashing. #linkbaitpost

  6. 9
    Robert Hartland
    November 12th, 2009 9:26 am

    This was a nice list with some new additions mixed with themes that have been posted on SM before. I found at least one new theme I want to install and try out on one of my personal sites. That in itself makes this post worth it right?

  7. 10
    cardeo
    November 12th, 2009 9:26 am

    Thanks for including my Cardeo Minimal theme in your list! Much appreciated, I’m going to start working on an update to that theme and a new minimal theme in the near future.

  8. 11
    Ivan
    November 12th, 2009 9:39 am

    I actually liked you guys better in the old days when you published much more of this kind of lists (CSS, Themes, whatever). Keep it up!

  9. 12
    wrerm
    November 12th, 2009 9:40 am

    I agree good quality free templates are hard to come by…wish there were more…like Robert said, some of these are recycled, I’ve seen them before.

  10. 13
    jason
    November 12th, 2009 9:45 am

    Good find on the debug theme

  11. 14
    Stijn
    November 12th, 2009 9:47 am

    It’s been a while, but I absolutely adore these inspirational posts. Always interesting to pick the brains of other designers. Understandably I voted for “Show more!”

  12. 15
    Sathish
    November 12th, 2009 9:56 am

    Great list.. I’ll probably use magazeen theme in my personal project for time being.

  13. 16
    Beau
    November 12th, 2009 9:56 am

    Imprezz is a beautiful theme, but it is incomplete, and has some inconsistencies throughout it, and some design flaws which are tricky to develop around. I developed a relatively simple site on the Imprezz theme, and it was a nightmare.

    Anyway, love the list. Just beware that some themes, especially free themes, can be kind of a beast under the hood.

    Beau

  14. 17
    danny
    November 12th, 2009 10:02 am

    I´m in the ZZZZZ boat as well, same old same old that I keep seeing on like a million “best fre wordpress themes” posts. Didn´t anyone make any new free themes this year? am I really gonna have to learn how to do it myself?!

  15. 18
    Callum Chapman
    November 12th, 2009 10:02 am

    Great list – some beautiful themes in there!

  16. 19
    Design Informer
    November 12th, 2009 10:05 am

    Who doesn’t love Wordpress themes? Good job SM.

  17. 20
    Michael Chanter
    November 12th, 2009 10:11 am

    Thanks – useful list of themes – some I have never seen before.

  18. 21
    Pavel Ciorici
    November 12th, 2009 10:18 am

    Great list! We also have developed a lot of wonderful WordPress Themes.

  19. 22
    Webecta
    November 12th, 2009 10:23 am

    Thanks for this great list of WordPress themes. While I’ve seen quite a number of them before, some of them are new and professionally designed.

  20. 23
    Clay
    November 12th, 2009 10:31 am

    Great List! I know when I was first starting out on Wordpress it was a little harder to find such great free themes but now there are so many its hard to choose! Thanks for sharing all these, will definitely bookmark this!

  21. 24
    Mladen
    November 12th, 2009 10:37 am

    Instapaper > read later

    Interesting Post

  22. 25
    AboSami
    November 12th, 2009 10:39 am

    wow beautiful themes

    thank you a lot ^_^

  23. 26
    DB Ferguson
    November 12th, 2009 10:50 am

    I very much appreciate the list posts. I often come back to the ones for vector graphics, fonts, Photoshop techniques, and WordPress blog templates. The ones you always feature are of the highest quality, and I always find something to use, even if I’m revisiting the same thread over and over for different needs. Thank you for the work that is done for these types of posts!

  24. 27
    Richard Cloutier
    November 12th, 2009 10:51 am

    Magazeen is a really nice theme ! High quality for sure !

  25. 28
    John (Human3rror)
    November 12th, 2009 10:57 am

    DOPE! Thanks, love the lists. give us more.

  26. 29
    Seth Lilly
    November 12th, 2009 11:09 am

    Thanks for featuring WordPress themes. It seems some really great themes are being released lately, and I think WordPress is getting better with each release. With Smashing Magazine featuring lists like this, professional looking WordPress-based sites spread quickly, and that only serves to boost growth.

  27. 30
    mupet
    November 12th, 2009 11:14 am

    Great list my favorite is berita, berita==”news”

  28. 31
    kiim
    November 12th, 2009 11:55 am

    I find it utterly irritating that you annonce these themes as “free” – if you are going to do so, make sure that 100% of all the themes are 100% free.

    • 32
      Mattthew F
      November 12th, 2009 1:35 pm

      kiim, would you mind clarifying which one(s) aren’t free?

  29. 33
    Ranadeep
    November 12th, 2009 12:16 pm

    I just hope my themes make it sometime in the SmashingMagazine theme list…

    Good job guys…nice list.

  30. 34
    RAFi
    November 12th, 2009 12:38 pm

    MonkeyPR is a rip of http://freebiesdock.com/

  31. 35
    Jurica
    November 12th, 2009 12:47 pm

    Hello nice collection of wp themes.
    But bunch of links provided here are not working, and some of download links are dead.
    For example http://chris-wallace.com/downloads/gallery-latest.zip
    or this http://www.themescloset.com/2009/05/26-great-new-free-wordpress-themes-released-in-may/

    etc.
    Check links before u post something…
    Anyway thx for effort.

  32. 36
    Dimitris
    November 12th, 2009 12:59 pm

    Already use WPESP portfolio for my personal website! thanks guys!

  33. 37
    Eternyl
    November 12th, 2009 2:16 pm

    These are nice, some old…but it’s good to see the ecommerce & thematic theme stuff.

  34. 38
    AK
    November 12th, 2009 2:32 pm

    Great post!

    As long as the lists are new and fresh… keep them coming!

  35. 39
    Arsenal
    November 12th, 2009 2:58 pm

    Good list, but Modfolio isn’t free. The Modfolio frame needs to be paid for, great :(

    (SM) We are sorry, it was a mistake by one of our contributors. The article was updated.

    • 40
      Webanddesigners
      November 12th, 2009 4:06 pm

      True its not free

  36. 41
    Brett
    November 12th, 2009 3:31 pm

    gallery theme has changes. you should update the previews.

  37. 42
    Al dente
    November 12th, 2009 3:44 pm

    Some nice stuff there … however if you want the best designs you need to pay for them. And rightly so! We expect too much to be free these days …

  38. 43
    Mark Lea
    November 12th, 2009 4:06 pm

    Many of these themes have been featured before and at least two of them are not free. You even mention it yourself, even though the title of the article is 40 Free High Quality Wordpress Themes.

    Why?

    (SM) We are sorry, Mark, it was a mistake by one of our contributors. The article was updated.

  39. 44
    Irene
    November 12th, 2009 4:43 pm

    Some Great! :D

  40. 45
    Anggi@icreativelabs
    November 12th, 2009 4:48 pm

    OMG AppCloud on a list :D thanks Smashing Magazine

  41. 46
    YOMO
    November 12th, 2009 6:06 pm

    HELPFUL

  42. 47
    Joshua Choo
    November 12th, 2009 6:19 pm

    Great Stuff! Wordpress is King!

  43. 48
    Daya D
    November 12th, 2009 10:02 pm

    awesome collection! thanks for SM….

  44. 49
    sudhir
    November 12th, 2009 11:04 pm

    nice list of themes.. though some featured be4

  45. 50
    Nicola
    November 13th, 2009 12:10 am

    I love the ecommerce themes, more of those please, but can we have some more free themes with things like youtube in the sidebar, media rich for portfolios or themes for bands/shops etc as Im sure there are lots of people who use wordpress for more than just a blog.

  46. 51
    Smashing Buzz
    November 13th, 2009 12:30 am

    WP lovers always find better themes for future enhancements like me, i really like your listed themes.

  47. 52
    spritzstuhl
    November 13th, 2009 1:06 am

    Nice list. Maybe for my next site I’ll have a look at WP (at last).

  48. 53
    Razvan
    November 13th, 2009 1:17 am

    gr8 stuff again. 10x for this post. keep it coming!

  49. 54
    JVenter
    November 13th, 2009 2:32 am

    Congrats Adii – you and your team keep doing it!
    Let South African Designers set the standard…

  50. 55
    Rüstem Çetinkaya
    November 13th, 2009 3:11 am

    i liked that thanks for information

  51. 56
    Ujjwol
    November 13th, 2009 3:52 am

    App Cloud like magazine theme would rock.

  52. 57
    julio
    November 13th, 2009 6:02 am

    cool post my friend can really use this post he keeps bugging me about designing a website for him lol.

  53. 58
    bs.kishore
    November 13th, 2009 6:56 am

    I’m afraid ,the list seems a tad outdated..some have already been covered by SM..surely
    one expects a lot from you …

  54. 59
    Chris
    November 13th, 2009 1:25 pm

    There is a typo in the link to the Carrington theme so that it leads to a 404 page on their site. It should be pretty easy to fix though. Just thought you should know.

  55. 60
    rems
    November 13th, 2009 1:53 pm

    sweeeeet. u guys are the bomb!!
    =-)

  56. 61
    Iain
    November 14th, 2009 9:03 pm

    The theme you titled ‘Album Theme’ (by Allan Cole) should be titled Autofocus, as written in its description… minor, I know, but since I’m using his fantastic theme, I thought it was worth a mention!

  57. 62
    Alex Flueras
    November 14th, 2009 9:37 pm

    Sweeeeeet list, thanks for sharing.

  58. 63
    Liza
    November 16th, 2009 1:04 am

    it’s been ages since I wanted to download the monkey theme http://monkeypr.ajansretro.com
    did anyone manage? I input my email, site url and code they ask but probably something is wrong. Great list of themes btw!

  59. 64
    Steve
    November 17th, 2009 12:04 am

    Is it just me or does the Cool Retro theme not actually work?

    Installed onto a fresh WordPress install the post and sidebar texts are shifted to the left making it unusable.

    Tried downloading for a second time but same result.

    Pretty poor.

  60. 65
    MamieW.
    November 20th, 2009 2:41 am

    Wordpress themes are all starting to look alike. There is very little originality anymore!
    Seriously, does the same guy make them all now?

    We need new blood in the designs for WP. Drop the magazine-styles, please.

  61. 66
    sai
    November 25th, 2009 1:36 pm

    awesome list! keep it up.

  62. 67
    Adam
    November 25th, 2009 7:19 pm

    @Nicola There’s some pretty amazing band wordpress themes out there, checkout http://www.bandwebsitetemplate.com and http://www.bandthemer.com

  63. 68
    Tolga
    December 5th, 2009 10:03 am

    nice works . thank you

  64. 69
    Mehul Jain
    January 2nd, 2010 5:25 am

    Oh man…. I can’t even tell you how awesome this post is… seriously.. i have been searching for so long for the perfect themes that’ll work with wp-ecommerce.. and here, i didn’t find 1.. but 2 of them that look perfect.. THANK YOU!

  65. 70
    Anggi@icreativelabs
    February 9th, 2010 6:01 am

    Hi guys, great news
    we have been released new wp-ecommerce, its free :D
    Kelontong WordPress e-Commerce theme
    http://portfolio.icreativelabs.com/free-wordpress-e-commerce-theme-kelontong/
    get it now :)

  1. 00

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