The search for WordPress themes is never-ending. Should you find a free theme? Or shell out the bucks for a premium theme?
While exceptional content doesn’t need to be pretty to communicate, we can’t help wanting a little style with our substance.
If you’re like us, you want an eye-catching WordPress layout that looks sharp, creative and has as much style as your writing. Something unique and beautifully coded to render across all browsers, and maybe add a little SEO juice too.
The best WordPress themes offer all of that. And, often come with a pretty good support forum too. Some of these Worpress themes are free, but don’t be afraid to pay for something exceptional. Let’s visit 13 amazing places you can go to get awesome premium WordPress themes.
Blog Oh! Blog
Blog Oh! Blog offers some brilliant themes for download and purchase. With a style that’s both clean and modern you can have an exceptionally sleek look with any of these designs. Check out both the free and paid sections here. Their free templates have some unique designs and layouts!
Themes Junction
Themes Junction advertises ‘High quality word press themes for free.’ They have a huge selection, over 4,000 layouts, some are just nice but there are also many hidden gems. Look around, you’ll find some excellent designs and all for free! Many of these designs are not exclusive to the site, you’ll probably see them elsewhere too but unlike many of the other ‘collective’ type sites this one organizes everything very well and lists the authors website in the sub-page for each design. Handy!
StudioPress
The designs from StudioPress are another set of themes you’ve probably seen around the web. They are extremely popular, and they have specific themes for real estate agents, news sites, video blogs, and photo blogs all with a few extras that are targeted for each particular industry. For instance the WordPress theme for Real Estate Agents (titled “Agent”) includes all the custom fields needed to use the posts to create housing lists. It’s set up to be plug and play WordPress development, but check out their showcase to see how designers have customized the themes. (One of TutorialBlog’s editors uses a Studio Press theme for her green blog, as does this site!)
Elegant Themes
Elegant Themes may be a pay-only theme developer, but the price is set at just $19.95 for the year! The WordPress Theme subscription buys you access to all of their designs. On top of that they offer personal attention from the developer of you need a little help along the way. A total steal, especially considering the quality of the designs.
WPRemix
WPRemix is for especially folks that want to use WordPress as a CMS. Unlike the other sites on this list, WPRemix is not a set of themes it is a single theme purchase with lots of built-in options for customization. There are 10 choices for homepage layouts and 20 different single page templates. If you’re handy with CSS, you could make an infinite number of sites and never need to buy another WordPress theme.
Theme Forest
Theme Forest is another collective of designs, this time each design is set for sale by the original designer. It’s a fantastic concept and you can see a wide range of styles and designs by going to one place. While there are not any themes set for free, they are very reasonably priced between $10 and $45.
Free Theme Layouts
That’s right a totally free collective of originally designed sites! With the option to purchase the PSDs and remove the credits at their sister site themelayouts.com. Clean to grungy to hip to funky, all kinds of styles here!
Scribblescratch
Free themes by Teresa, her style is sweet and funky-chic! These are not for commercial use but these fantastic themes would be great artistic and personal blogs.
WOOthemes
Free and paid layouts, Woothemes is run by 3 designers who offer customer service and support on all of their paid designs! As you go through their layouts you’ll see the free ones marked with a green banner along the top of the thumbnail. Even their free designs are stunning. (The Southern California Green Chamber of Commerce uses a modified woo theme.)
3OneSeven
Milo is a talented designer who graciously offers over a hundred wordpress themes for free. All her own design, these looks are very unique and funky. This place is worth hours of browsing!
StyleWP
StyleWP is a WordPress theme powerhouse. Similar to TemplateMonster, the site specializes in all things WordPress. You can browse themes by category — magazine themes, corporate themes, blogging themes — or look for themes with fancy features such as Flash and drop-down menus.
Web2Feel
Jinsona runs this website and offers his designs for free to users. He also runs a forum with free help for any of his work. There are also a lot of user submitted themes, ones I’ve seen several times before on other websites but still a very nice selection.
Press75
Press75.comis the home of Jason Schuller’s professional WordPress layouts. This is a particularly stunning small collection of designs, each for $75 but he does offer two free themes in the bottom right corner of the page. His site is relatively new so keep an eye on his excellent work.
There are thousands of amazing WP themes and template designs out there with just as many sites to showcase them. Leave us note in the comments and tell us which premium WordPress themes you’re fond of and why.
A little biased, are we? Milo is female, FYI
My blog is attired in a Blog Oh! Blog theme. I remain quite happy with it.
Some great links here. I’ve used themes from the first 3 you listed and have had great success. Thanks.
This is brilliant! Even though I am a Web Designer – I need to start a blog for a future business idea with the lest amount of effort. I appreciate the links above. Thanks
The usability and sheer number of themes to fit any type of blog is probably the number one reason why I love WordPress more than any other blogger platform out there.
Love wordpress.
I use it loads in my web design usually just use ‘white as milk’ and style it up the same as the website, but there are a few awesome theme here that I’ll definitely be using.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Thanks, great resources, I discover themesjunction
Great list Joel.
I’m always searching around for blog themes for my clients rather than having to custom-make them. With the thousands of themes available both free and paid, it seems a no-brainer to just grab an existing one and make minor changes.
No client has ever complained that their new template cost too little and was provided too quickly
This is a great list thanks.
I am just getting into wordpress, I know it has been out a while but I only just realised it is the perfect solution for my clients CMS! I have been racking my brain trying to implement CMS on my existing HTML sites, when I could have been using wordpress all along.
Thanks again for the info.
Great suggestions. Found a few themes I’ll be using in the future.
really nice effort for share wordpress themes resources.