10 Free WordPress Themes That Blow Many Premium Themes Away
There are now more than 100 premium WordPress themes on the market but the quality of those themes varies greatly. In fact, some ‘premium’ themes don’t really deserve that title; they’re only ‘premium’ themes in that you have to pay to use them. In some cases, you’d have to be mad to do so.
At the same time, amazing free themes keep coming onto the market. Some of those free themes are far and away more impressive than some of those being offered up as ‘premium’ themes.
Here are 10 free WordPress themes that will knock your socks off. They’ll also blow many so-called ‘premium’ themes out of the water.
Brightness
Half magazine and half blog, Brightness is one of the most impressive free theme launches of recent times. Its modern, sleek look is reminiscent of some of the best in professional blog design, sites such as Freelance Switch and PSD Tuts.
Lightning
Lightning reminds me a lot of sites like Smashing Magazine, although it’s much more stripped back in its out-of-the box format. Nonetheless, with the addition of a custom header image and a little tweaking of the styles, this could easily become a professional, eye-catching blog theme.
Charade
Sprinkled with beautiful icons, packing visual punch and offering up stylish typography, Charade is a free WordPress theme that impresses.
Thematic
Thematic mightn’t look all that special but under the hood, this theme offers a wider range of simple customisation than pretty much any premium theme on the market.
MassivePress
With a main content column featuring thumbnails for each post, a central navigation-type column and a right-hand sidebar visually showing off featured articles, MassivePress offers a great degree of flexibility.
The Morning After
There can be little doubt that the creator of The Morning After could charge people to download. It’s a clean, mean magazine-style WordPress machine.
Overstand
Free from clutter but with beautiful visual style, Overstand delivers a magazine-style homepage combining large slugs, neat headlines and thumbnail images.
Thunderbolt
Another clean and simple magazine style, Thunderbolt offers a beautiful, customizable WordPress solution for moderate to advanced users.
The Unstandard
As the name attests, this is not your average WordPress theme. It catches the user’s attention with headlines set over the top of large images on the homepage.
Neoclassical
A three-column classic offering a central column for main content, rotating header images and picture-perfect typography.
Natural Power
It mightn’t have the flexibility of some premium themes but for stylish, modern blogging, Natural Power has all the bases covered.
5. July 2008 at 03:18
hi the links for Fake Blog and Thunderbolt are the same.
5. July 2008 at 05:32
Thanks for including Thematic here. This is a great list with some really great themes. I’m honored to have my work in such fine company.
5. July 2008 at 06:29
Thanks to this list I’ve found a few styles that I didn’t know about that I really like!
5. July 2008 at 06:39
This is a great list of themes. I agree, some of the best!
5. July 2008 at 13:48
yep. but IMHO none of them offer personalized support. without that, most of these is useless fro novice users.
5. July 2008 at 14:46
[...] I will not be taking on any web design/programming work for the next year or so. I will be writing here quite regularly, and I will, of course, be doing a lot of stuff with Split. I will also, as time permits, continue to maintain and work on the Morning After theme for WordPress (a “clean, mean, magazine-style machine”, apparently). [...]
5. July 2008 at 15:02
@Roger - Thanks for the heads-up. I’ve fixed the link now.
5. July 2008 at 19:41
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6. July 2008 at 01:06
Awesome, thanks for these. Still a newbie so trying to learn. Is there anything like this for Tumblr?
6. July 2008 at 04:17
Thanks for the list… ! :) yeah, they blow premium themes…
6. July 2008 at 07:17
We took the “master Plan theme and made it more for us. But what a great launching point!!!
http://www.utahluxury.com
6. July 2008 at 07:19
My bad it is called the “Morning After” theme by the “Master Plan”
http://www.utahluxury.com
6. July 2008 at 22:22
wow
i will certainly be recomending this website ;)
great pics
http://www.duivesteyn.com.au
7. July 2008 at 15:58
[...] WordPress Themes shares the 10 Free WordPress Themes That Blow Many Premium Themes Away. Here’s the [...]
8. July 2008 at 02:14
OpenBook by jbj from catswhocode.com
http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/featured/wordpress-openbook-premium-theme-available-for-download-20
8. July 2008 at 06:19
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8. July 2008 at 15:17
I definitely agree with Mike. OpenBook is an awesome theme and would fits very well in this lits.
11. July 2008 at 16:55
great to share the themes
13. July 2008 at 01:53
[...] “10 Free WordPress Themes That Blow Many Premium Themes Away” - and they’re not kidding. And I’ve been shopping and shopping for a theme - most likely to exccess - and there were several thems that I found very appealing and hadn’t seen. And I haven’t even looked at 60 Best WordPress Themes For Freelancers, or Shutter Themes (”Show off your photos in style”) [...]
22. July 2008 at 13:32
Great list, a couple of themes I havent seen before here! Ive added some of them to my site as well
Themes that dont suck!
http://www.themesthatdontsuck.com
Thanks!
25. July 2008 at 21:36
thanks goog theme
31. July 2008 at 12:51
[...] Best Wordpress Themes – 10 free Wordpress themes that blow many premium themes away [...]
7. August 2008 at 09:15
[...] - bookmarked by 3 members originally found by rsgranne on 2008-07-18 10 Free WordPress Themes That Blow Many Premium Themes Away http://www.bestwpthemes.com/10-free-wordpress-themes-that-blow-many-premium-themes-away/ - [...]
22. August 2008 at 00:22
Wow!! I’m blown away.
I’m now diving into WP…Blogger is too LIMITING.
Is there a PDF file I can download with lots of offline tutorials?? I’m here in bandwidth-starved Kenya so I’m not always online.
- Max (aka MaxTheITpro)
27. August 2008 at 07:02
This is a great collection of free themes. Thanks for putting this list together.
27. August 2008 at 12:03
[...] -10 Free WordPress Themes That Blow Many Premium Themes Away (link) [...]
28. August 2008 at 17:50
Awesome colletions!
Very beautiful thmes, thank you.
29. August 2008 at 16:17
the charade theme is awesome…
6. September 2008 at 00:37
AWESOME! I especially like the MassivePress theme, the idea of using a thumbnail for each post is amazing. Sharp and clean, I’ll be migrating to it this week.
11. September 2008 at 12:17
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11. September 2008 at 19:33
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12. September 2008 at 03:46
[...] 10 Free Wp Themes That Blow Many Premium Themes Away [04 JUL [...]
13. September 2008 at 02:44
This post is definitely “bookmark” worthy. I’ll certainly be using some of these themes in the near future.
14. September 2008 at 13:28
Very nice set of themes!!
15. September 2008 at 08:00
[...] Best Wordpress Themes; Date: 2008 / 04 [...]
25. September 2008 at 04:43
Your Design is cutting the edge, especially for themes with image.
Nice themes…!!