Smashing Magazine - we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.
40 Free High-Quality WordPress Themes
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Obscure WordPress Theme
A dark magazine WordPress theme suitable for any site niche; also a good fit for a community-based site.
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”.
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.
Cool Retro
A nice, clean illustrated WordPress theme with a retro-look and nice typography.
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.
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.
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
Monkeypr Theme (via Queness)
Monkeypr is a nicely designed and fun WordPress theme.
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.
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.
Glassic
A simple clean WordPress theme with the focus on typography and simplicity. Released by Abdullah Ibrahim exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers.
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.
Futurosity Aperio Prototype
Futurosity Aperio is a clean straight-forward blog theme built on Sandbox
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cardeo Minimal
A minimal three-column theme with plenty of white space and gray text.
Album Theme (by Allan Cole)
Auto-focus is a blog theme designed for photographers to showcase their work.
Mystique (by Digital Nature)
This sleek one column theme has a flexible-width, threaded comments, and an adjustable header.
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.
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.
Calmdream WordPress Theme
A very clean and simple layout for magazine layouts.
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!
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.
Mobile Theme (via Carrington Themesl)
The Carrington Mobile has a beautiful design supporting advanced touch browsers (Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Pre).
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.
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.
ImpreZZ
A dark, three-column theme that gives the second column a third dimension.
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.
- 65 Comments
- 1
- 2November 12th, 2009 9:17 am
Some awesome themes; keep it up guys!
- 3November 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)
- 4November 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
- 5November 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….?- 6November 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/ - 7November 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.
- 8November 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
- 10November 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.
- 11November 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!
- 12November 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.
- 13November 12th, 2009 9:45 am
Good find on the debug theme
- 14November 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!”
- 15November 12th, 2009 9:56 am
Great list.. I’ll probably use magazeen theme in my personal project for time being.
- 16November 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
- 17November 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?!
- 19November 12th, 2009 10:05 am
Who doesn’t love Wordpress themes? Good job SM.
- 20November 12th, 2009 10:11 am
Thanks – useful list of themes – some I have never seen before.
- 21November 12th, 2009 10:18 am
Great list! We also have developed a lot of wonderful WordPress Themes.
- 22November 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.
- 23November 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!
- 24November 12th, 2009 10:37 am
Instapaper > read later
Interesting Post
- 25November 12th, 2009 10:39 am
wow beautiful themes
thank you a lot ^_^
- 26November 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!
- 27November 12th, 2009 10:51 am
Magazeen is a really nice theme ! High quality for sure !
- 28November 12th, 2009 10:57 am
DOPE! Thanks, love the lists. give us more.
- 29November 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.
- 30November 12th, 2009 11:14 am
Great list my favorite is berita, berita==”news”
- 31November 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.
- 32November 12th, 2009 1:35 pm
kiim, would you mind clarifying which one(s) aren’t free?
- 32
- 33November 12th, 2009 12:16 pm
I just hope my themes make it sometime in the SmashingMagazine theme list…
Good job guys…nice list.
- 34
- 35November 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. - 36November 12th, 2009 12:59 pm
Already use WPESP portfolio for my personal website! thanks guys!
- 37November 12th, 2009 2:16 pm
These are nice, some old…but it’s good to see the ecommerce & thematic theme stuff.
- 38November 12th, 2009 2:32 pm
Great post!
As long as the lists are new and fresh… keep them coming!
- 39November 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.
- 40November 12th, 2009 4:06 pm
True its not free
- 40
- 41November 12th, 2009 3:31 pm
gallery theme has changes. you should update the previews.
- 42November 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 …
- 43November 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.
- 44November 12th, 2009 4:43 pm
Some Great! :D
- 45November 12th, 2009 4:48 pm
OMG AppCloud on a list :D thanks Smashing Magazine
- 46November 12th, 2009 6:06 pm
HELPFUL
- 47November 12th, 2009 6:19 pm
Great Stuff! Wordpress is King!
- 48November 12th, 2009 10:02 pm
awesome collection! thanks for SM….
- 49November 12th, 2009 11:04 pm
nice list of themes.. though some featured be4
- 50November 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.
- 51November 13th, 2009 12:30 am
WP lovers always find better themes for future enhancements like me, i really like your listed themes.
- 52November 13th, 2009 1:06 am
Nice list. Maybe for my next site I’ll have a look at WP (at last).
- 53November 13th, 2009 1:17 am
gr8 stuff again. 10x for this post. keep it coming!
- 54November 13th, 2009 2:32 am
Congrats Adii – you and your team keep doing it!
Let South African Designers set the standard… - 55November 13th, 2009 3:11 am
i liked that thanks for information
- 56November 13th, 2009 3:52 am
App Cloud like magazine theme would rock.
- 57November 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.
- 58November 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 … - 59November 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.
- 60November 13th, 2009 1:53 pm
sweeeeet. u guys are the bomb!!
=-) - 61November 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!
- 62November 14th, 2009 9:37 pm
Sweeeeeet list, thanks for sharing.
- 63November 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! - 64November 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.
- 65November 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.
- 00
There are no trackbacks at this time. If you are interested in leaving a trackback, please use this URL.
Leave a Comment
Make sure you enter the * required information where indicated. Please also rate the article as it will help us decide future content and posts. Comments are moderated – and rel="nofollow" is in use. Please no link dropping, no keywords or domains as names; do not spam, and do not advertise!
Interact
Popular
- 100 Wordpress Themes
- Photoshop Tutorials
- Fantastic Wallpapers
- 40+ Excellent Freefonts
- Dual-Screen Wallpapers
- Wordpress Themes for 2009
- Illustrator Tutorials
- Incredible Free Icon Sets
- High-Quality Free Fonts
- 30 Scripts For Galleries
- Photoshop Text Effects
- Useful Icon Sets
- Web Design Trends
- iPhone Wallpapers
- Before Launching a Website
- CSS Layouts And Templates
- Photoshop Actions
- Stunning Pictures and Photos
- Fantastic HDR Pictures
- Logo Design Tutorials
- Free Design Templates
- 10 Mistakes In Logo Design
- Photoshop Custom Shapes
- 40 Creative Design Layouts
- 8 Layout Solutions
- 53 CSS Techniques
- Photography Techniques
- Black & White Photography
- Styling Design Elements
- CSS-Based Forms
- 50 jQuery Techniques
- 50 Portfolio Websites
- 50 CSS Techniques
- Creative Logo Designs
- Desktop Wallpapers
- 25 Open Source Mac Apps
- 50 Free Icon Sets
- The Big Showcase Of Online T-Shirt Stores - http://bit.ly/5Tq8uA
- @ilmv oh ok then ;)
- @ilmv no, the SM Book will not be out of date :) We made sure it contains universal design, usability and marketing principles.
- Apple ad bombing Windows 7 on Google - http://bit.ly/28ctPq
- Atatonic - a fresh CSS framework - http://bit.ly/4oOV2w (via @umutm)
- @HrvojeKC yes, that's an interesting idea. Maybe when the waiting is over, we'll write a detailed post about it.




































(41 votes, average: 4.39 out of 5)
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/