5 Best Free WordPress Blog Themes 2021

 38 Best Free WordPress Blog Themes 2021

Without a doubt, one of the best things about WordPress is the fact that it’s open source and, thus, free to use. All a smart, resourceful site owner needs to create a unique, functional, attractive site is a registered domain and a server, resulting in a low monthly total cost.

Of course, to enable WordPress to live up to its potential as the basis for an exquisite website, you’ll need a WordPress theme.

It’s true that in recent years many of the most-talked about themes are the ones that come with a premium price tag attached. For many beginning bloggers — and experienced ones, too, for that matter — a pricey theme is just not on the cards. Unless and until your blog is producing sufficient income, it can be hard to justify the expense of a premium theme.

But if you’re trying to build a great WordPress blog on a bootstrap budget, there’s great news. Lots of great WordPress themes that are perfect for blogs are completely free.

We’ve gathered together a collection of over 20 of the very best free WordPress blog themes below. Our criteria were straightforward. The themes had to be clean, content-focused, and well-coded.

And we’re sure that no matter what niche you’re blogging in, you’ll find a theme here that will work for you.

1. Cali

The Cali WordPress theme is both beautiful and free, offering a gorgeous blogging or magazine website for anything from travel to fashion. Upon first glance, you’ll note that Cali offers a responsive layout for viewing on smaller devices. This not only improves your user-experience, but the search engines will take note and potentially boost your search results. Furthermore, Cali has a stunning format, with large photography locations and lots of white space to let your visitors breathe. It looks similar to an online magazine (with several spots to link to your articles,) but it cuts down on the general clutter and intimidating nature of a magazine. Several widgets are provided with Cali. These can be placed in areas like the sidebar, header, and footer. For instance, you might want a widget box that talks about the author and explains the history of the blog. That’s available in the About Me widget, which you would most likely place in your sidebar. The carousel is one of the primary features from Cali, as it lets you share a beautiful series of photographs. You have options to show certain posts, hide thumbnails, and get rid of post dates and authors.

In the options module, Cali provides numerous settings for adjusting what your website looks like. For instance, you might want to change around your colors to better match the colors in your logo. We also like the fact that you can set certain fonts so that your words pop and look more like your branding. Social buttons are also included with the Cali WordPress theme. The theme has two positions to place your social media buttons. One of them is above your logo, so you can push people to follow you on places like Facebook and Twitter. Another reason we enjoy the theme so much is because of the WooCommerce integration. This plugin automatically turns your blog into an eCommerce website. This means you can start selling products or merchandise to your fans. The Google Fonts are helpful for switching out your typography, while the translation-ready tools are there to ensure that all of your visitors are able to understand what’s being said in your articles. Many people also like the live customizer, which is perfect for those who don’t want to mess around with any coding. Finally, you can expect cross-browser support and fast customer support when you opt for this free, modern WordPress theme.

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2. Cenote

The Cenote WordPress theme packs quite a few features into a lightweight, free theme. It’s a free WordPress blogging theme with a clean and modern layout for running a personal blog or even something you plan to make money from. The good thing about Cenote is that it uses plenty of white space and standard colors so you can use it for a wide variety of industries. For example, some people like to take advantage of Cenote for fashion blogging. Others like it for travel, food, or lifestyle blogging. It all depends on what your plans are, but the Cenote WordPress theme is flexible and feature-rich for making those changes. The theme provides a one-click installation button, along with primary color options for matching your branding and logo. The four widget areas can be placed in the header or footer, as well as the sidebars. This theme is made to work well with the search engines, so you can boost your rankings and try to find new readers with all of your posts.

Boxed and wide layouts ensure that your site either covers the entire screen or cuts off at the sides. You’ll also find that the Cenote WordPress theme includes a responsive design so that all of your visitors can see the content on mobile devices. The sticky menu is great so that your visitors always have the menu in front of their eyes. We like this since it’s often difficult to figure out where to go–but with a sticky menu, the next step is in front of you at all times. Another item to get excited about is the social icon pack. Reveal icons from Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and more, using the buttons to send people to your social pages. What’s more is that the Cenote theme has an area to adjust custom CSS. The demo content is great for getting started with your design, but more advanced coders will appreciate the custom CSS. Overall, the Cenote WordPress theme is a well-documented option, and you get some translation tools for improving your reach and finding an audience.

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3. Gucherry Blog

The GuCherry Blog theme is a beautiful and minimal theme for fashion, travel, and lifestyle bloggers. It features an attention-grabbing slider at the top and has plenty of widgets that make it easy to add content to your sidebar as well as other widgetized areas on your site. This theme also comes with plenty of space for ad display so you can easily monetize your blog with ad networks such as Google AdSense. GuCherry Blog theme supports multiple post formats so you can make your posts more engaging by sharing videos, audio, and written content.

In terms of customization, the theme is easy to customize and allows you to upload your own header image or logo, change colors, and customize fonts. It’s fully responsive and SEO optimized so you can improve your search engine rank. The GuCherry blog also comes with a custom social media widget and built-in related posts display so you can keep visitors on your site longer.

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4. Blog Way

A minimalist approach makes Blog Way an expansive, flexible theme for blogs in a number of niches. It’s particularly well-suited for blogs built on personal brands, such as coaches, consultants, freelancers, and artists.

Delivering a clean, streamlined look with a professional attitude, Blog Way can be customized in a number of ways. You’ll enjoy unlimited options when it comes to your blog’s color scheme. Widgets help you direct readers to all your profiles on major social networking sites, among other things.

The theme enables threaded comments on your posts and pages. This is a great approach for bloggers who want to build their communities on-site and encourage conversations between users. It also offers pagination options, a full-width layout as well as optional left and right sidebars, and the option to turn a post “sticky” to keep it at the top of your list of posts.

Blog Way integrates easily and plays well with WooCommerce. So if you’re ready for an online store as part of your blog, you’ll find it a relatively simplified way to get started.

Of particular note is the author profile widget. This widget lets you highlight the personality behind your brand, making Blog Way perfect for solopreneurs, authors, freelancers, coaches and consultants. Essentially, this theme is perfect for anyone whose brand is personal in nature or who needs to highlight themselves as the brains behind the blog.

Blog Way promises a responsive experience for visitors using mobile devices, as well as the ability to create and feature a custom menu. And when you’re ready for more, there’s also an available Pro version for purchase from Themeforest. The Pro version offers custom Google fonts, the ability to customize the site footer, and additional layout options.

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5. Olsen Light

Developed by Anastis Sourgoutsidis, Olsen Light is a crisp, starched white shirt of a WordPress theme. Completely blog-friendly, Olsen Light is full-width, clean, and visually stunning, drawing your visitors’ eyes to your content.

Perfect for photography-related blogs, Olsen Light lends itself well to a number of niches. You can choose between a right sidebar layout or a full-width template.

This theme offers simple customization through the new and improved WordPress Customizer. You can upload logos, a site favicon, customize and configure pagination styles, and more through the Customizer options. You can also implement a visually striking image carousel on your front page, if you choose.

The theme makes connection with your Google Analytics account a relatively simple process. In addition, Olsen Light offers three custom widgets: an “about the author” profile box, a social icons box, and a widget for customizing the display of your recent posts.

You can configure and display social sharing options for your posts and pages straight from the theme, without the need for an additional plugin. It also integrates with Instagram though you’ll need a plugin to take advantage of this option.

The theme is translation ready. Instead of having to translate individual text strings in every file for your templates, you can just edit a single file and be done.

The design is promised to be “retina ready” with a crisp, pixel-perfect display on retina monitors and screens. And the code is streamlined for optimal page load times, which is important for search engine optimization as well as user experience.

A premium version is also available for purchase with additional features, including support for WooCommerce, eleven additional layout options, more web fonts to choose from, extended color customization options, and more. The Premium version offers priority support, as well, although even free version users can access forum-based support and assistance.