Choosing the right WordPress theme helps make a polished site. Finding the right theme, however, may seem daunting.
With ThemeForest now offering over 11,200 premium WordPress themes, you have many amazing styles from which to choose. This article showcases some of the best.
If you're getting started with WordPress site, it's useful to know that you can apply one theme and as many plugins as you need. Plugins add extra functions—for instance, WooCommerce allows your site to incorporate an online shop, and Visual Composer adds a drag-and-drop tool for designing pages.
Themes change how WordPress displays information on a website, ultimately dictating the design and layout. Premium themes tend to come bundled with plugins, some enhancing the overall look and functionality. Look out for themes that offer popular plugin integration; this way, they fit seamlessly into the chosen design.
Multi-Purpose WordPress Themes
A common choice when choosing a theme is the multi-purpose theme, the Swiss Army knife of WordPress. This is often a good way to get started, especially for WordPress themes for artists and illustrators.
These themes are also suitable for a creative site, a corporate site, or anything in between. They aim to be as customisable as possible, without you having to delve into the raw PHP, HTML, and CSS upon which WordPress is built.
These themes tend to be the most popular over on ThemeForest, as they can be used for almost anything. They're particularly good for artists and illustrators who want a WordPress theme to convey their work and ideas.
Choosing a popular theme can even be a good thing, as it means it's been extensively tested by real-world users so it should be bug-free. And if you do have a problem, a quick search will likely find a number of solutions.
Here are five of the most popular multi-purpose themes.
1. Avada | Website Builder For WordPress & WooCommerce
- Overall best seller on ThemeForest with over 691,000 sales
- Powerful drag-and-drop visual page builder, "Fusion Builder."
- Extensively customisable from Admin Panel
- Dedicated customer support team included in the price
- Responsive design, so it adapts to any screen size
- Several different portfolio layouts available
2. X | The Theme
- Front end page builder "Cornerstone" (shows how the site will look as you build it rather than having to preview)
- X also comes with a suite of extensions—essentially plugins incorporated into the theme, allowing the toggling of some functionality on and off
- Four "stacks," includes sub-themes with unique designs, each with their own set of demos
- Over 218,000 sales make this one of ThemeForest's biggest sellers!
3. Enfold - Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme
- Flexible drag-and-drop visual page builder
- Powerful customization from the Admin Panel
- Excellent customer support team
- Over 235,000 sales on this product alone
Artist and Illustrator Themes
When it comes to professional WordPress themes for artists and illustrators, ThemeForest has your back.
Whether you're looking for a specific illustrator theme WordPress solution, or something intended more as WordPress themes for artists, there's plenty of choice and they're all high quality.
4. Illustrator - Illustration & Artist Portfolio
- 15 Distinct hompages for specific use-cases
- Fully responsive and retina-ready
- Specifically designed for illustrators, animators, concept artists, storytellers and creatives
- 10+ incredible portfolio templates for artwork display
5. Marceau - Creative Portfolio Theme
- Perfect WordPress theme for creatives such as artists and illustrators
- Multipurpose layouts to suit every need
- Highly customisable
- One-Click demo content import to get up and running easily
- WooCommerce integration
- Responsive and retina ready
6. Haar - Portfolio Theme for Designers, Artists and Illustrators
- Responsive and retina ready
- One-Click demo content import to get up and running easily
- WooCommerce integration
- WPBakery Page Builder Plugin for WordPress included
- Slider Revolution Responsive WordPress Plugin included
- Multiple customizable layouts for portfolio
Creative Focused Themes
Next we'll take a quick look at some multi-purpose themes with more of a creative/designer look for artists and illustrators.
Whilst they might not be quite as configurable, they make up for it with clean, modern designs and a focus on features such as portfolios, allowing you to quickly get something stylish up and running.
These make great choices for WordPress themes for artists. They're particularly good as illustrator theme WordPress choices, too.
7. Salient | Creative Multipurpose & WooCommerce Theme
- Version of Visual Composer tailored into the theme
- Clean design with one-click demo installation
- No prior coding knowledge needed
- Built with responsive styling
- Multiple styles available for blogging and so much more
8. Bridge - Creative Multipurpose WordPress Theme
- Over 200 demos with clean, modern designs
- A top seller in ThemeForest's Creative Category
- Instant theme setup with 24/7 support
- Unlimited header and menu layouts
- Step-by-step video tutorials included for your convenience
9. Brooklyn | Creative Multi-Purpose Responsive WordPress Theme
- Modern designs, featuring 20+ ready-to-use demos
- Slightly cheaper than most competitors at $49 versus the $59-69 range
- Powerful Admin Panel that is highly customizable and easy to use
- Comes with a built-in pricing table manager to create tables quickly and easily
- Fully translation-ready to unite your content with the world
10. Uncode - Creative & WooCommerce WordPress Theme
- A variety of portfolio layouts and concepts helps you tailor your personal brand to the audience you want
- Great customization options and reliable customer support
- Includes adaptive images to adapt to your visitor's individual screen
- Also enhanced with an impressive media library for any media you desire
11. Ronneby - High-Performance WordPress Theme
- 40+ amazingly stylish demos available
- Unbelievably easy to use, with a powerful, endless options panel
- Devoted customer support network with fast responses to any of your WordPress needs
- Suitable and recommended for beginners with video tutorials, documentation, and even a Facebook support community included
12. Stockholm - A Genuinely Multi-Concept Theme
- 4.7 out of 5 star rating.
- Fully customizable with 40+ stylish demos
- Comes with many free compatible plugins
- Easily integrate a shop with WooCommerce to sell your products right now
13. Impreza – Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
- Super convenient drag-and-drop interface
- Test drive the theme for free before purchase
- Comes bundled with three popular plugins from CodeCanyon
- Professional pre-built page layouts that are high customizable
- Translation ready with eight languages included
14. Oshine - Multipurpose Creative WordPress Theme
- Rated one of the best Portfolio and Photography themes from many top blogs
- Comes with 27 unique demos with irresistible designs
- Packed with hundreds of features to build the site of your dreams
- Over 10,000 happy customers with a 4.8 out of 5 star rating
Photography Focused Themes
The very flexibility of multi-purpose themes can work against us at times, and sometimes it's better to get something specialized towards our particular discipline.
Such focused themes are tailored by a web designer to look just right, then we just need to add our own content.
I've focused on photography as you can find themes for more specific disciplines, but creatives tend to want to show off what they've created in a visual way, something that photography-focused themes are generally good at.
15. CoffeeBean - Easy & Simple Portfolio for Freelancers, Studios and Photographers
CoffeeBean is a new minimalistic, simple and easy photographer and illustrator theme for WordPress.
It's beautifully responsive with three your four columns and full width display of portfolio, blog and contact pages. Plenty of customization options to really make it your own. A fantastic WordPress theme for artists.
Custom widgets for social icons means you can keep in touch with your customers and keep them updated and informed.
16. Core | Photography
- Well established ThemeForest author with over five years of experience
- Built with several homepage and portfolio styles to choose from
- Includes three gallery templates and a full-screen slideshow
- A responsive design with over 300 Google web fonts supported
17. Photolux - Photography Portfolio WordPress Theme
- Powerfully elegant theme best suited for photographers and creatives alike
- Includes a flexible and unique AJAX gallery with lots of options available
- Many styles currently available, from three base skins to 34 different background patterns
- Adobe Lightroom integration allows you to export photos to WordPress and keep them synchronized
- Extensive help documentation includes a beginner's section with additional helpful links
18. Bateaux - Creative Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
Bateaux is a wonderful creative multipurpose WordPress theme that's pixel-perfectly designed to create incredible websites for almost any business or industry that you can further customize from one of its 25 unique homepages.
Unleash your creativity with eight menu variations and more than 70 pre-built, retina-ready templates that are SEO-optimized and come with lifetime updates.
With Bateaux you get all the WordPress themes for artists, illustrators and photographers.
One-Page Themes
Now let's focus on themes designed with a particular web design trend in mind. The One-Page, or "scrolling design," eschews the traditional notion of a hierarchical set of pages to click through and, instead, offers a single scrolling page with more of a narrative structure.
Only recently has this been feasible, with changes in web technologies resulting in it becoming a more popular approach. This could even offer a guided path through the highlights of a portfolio. In its purest form, this would be the entire website, but can also serve as a landing page with more traditional pages for deeper exploration.
19. 907 - Responsive Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
- The only theme available with mouse-over videos to show your content off in style
- Unlimited portfolios and blogs, even on the same page
- Integrate a shop easily to expand your business with WooCommerce
- One-click demo importer to get started immediately.
20. KALLYAS - Creative eCommerce Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme
This photographer and illustrator WordPress theme has been a best seller for six years and you'll soon see why with this advanced WordPress theme for artists and illustrators.
Optimized for speed, this WordPress theme for illustrators comes with fast and reliable support, video and written tutorials and lifetime free updates. It's trusted by almost 50,000 customers!
Take a look at this fantastic theme and choose from one of more than 70 pre-built templates to get you started.
Up-and-Coming Themes
Finally, let's take a look at some less mature themes that have been new on the market in the last year or so. Though these come with the risk of uncertainty, I've stuck to more proven examples with good reviews.
21. TheGem - Creative Multi-Purpose & WooCommerce WordPress Theme
- A gorgeous, modern design that was made for high performance
- Satisfies any creative purpose, from design portfolios to online shops and more
- Perfectly SEO-friendly code that is guaranteed to result in a high Google ranking
- Fully responsive with over 150 pre-made demos and even more style options available
22. HyperX - Responsive Wordpress Portfolio Theme
- A 100% fully responsive and retina-ready WordPress theme
- Created with a clean, modern design that allows for almost any kind of portfolio or blog
- Live preview changes in real time with WordPress Customizer.
- Ideal for all creatives alike, from entrepreneurs to photographers and designers
- Comes with 24/6 highly rated customer support with additional online documentation available
- Complete with a resounding 5 out of 5 star rating!
23. Pillar - Multipurpose Multi-Concept Responsive WordPress Theme
- A pixel-perfect layout that is fully responsive and retina ready
- One-Page layout design that includes room for many traditional site sections
- Create a second featured image that changes the default image to display a second one on hover
- Created, tested, and validated with clean code using WordPress's best practices
24. Heli - Minimal Creative Black and White WordPress Theme
- A beautiful black and white dedicated WordPress theme
- Over 36 stunning pre-made homepages available with brand new demos and features
- A multipurpose theme that features a trendy style ideal for any creative or business
- Fast loading speed for optimal site performance
- Also includes a lifetime of updates for no extra fees
25. Grand Portfolio WordPress
- A portfolio focused theme specifically designed for the creative professional
- Let your work shine with unique gallery and portfolio options, including a full-screen gallery for the avid photographer
- The infinite scroll allows for endless scrolling that automatically loads new items
- Also built to support additional options like an online shop with $34 of premium plugins included
Grand Portfolio WordPress Demo
Free WordPress Themes for Artists
If you're looking for the right artist theme, WordPress is a versatile, customisable and excellent choice for setting up a website to showcase your work.
The WordPress site offers free WordPress themes for artists to get started with WordPress. For those looking for more control and customisation, more sophisticated WordPress themes for artists are available at ThemeForest.
Free WordPress Themes for Illustrators
If you're looking for the right illustrator theme, WordPress is a versatile, customisable and excellent choice for setting up a website to showcase your work.
With more than 8,000 themes from which to choose, WordPress offers an excellent choice for free WordPress themes for illustrators and a great way to get started.
The thing to note with free themes, though, is that they'll not be as extensible or as customisable as a low-cost, professional theme from ThemeForest.
Conclusion
This list is packed with exciting resources for anyone looking to create a website and showcase their career as a creative professional, online entrepreneur, and so much more.
And with thousands of WordPress Themes at your fingertips, chances are we've missed a few to add to your personal collection. Be sure to browse Envato Market and Envato Elements for more resources, and let us know your favorites in the comments below!
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Editorial Note: This post has been updated with contributions from Johnny Winter. Johnny is a staff writer with Envato Tuts+.
