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.
Don’t miss our full list of the web’s best WordPress themes, including the cream of the premium theme crop.
