I am obsessed with my blog. And by that I mean I’m obsessed with its design and layout and I change and tweak my themes all the time. Even when I was still blogging on Blogger, I loved to tweak my blog template. So much that I started a blog about modifying Blogger templates. I haven’t updated that blog in a long time, but I’m still messing around with blog themes.
I only use free themes though because, one, I can’t afford the premium ones, and, two, my preferences change so often that it’s impractical for me to spend on just one theme. I bought a premium theme only once in my entire life – after a whole lot of deliberation, mind you – and I regretted it because I just couldn’t get it to look right. Since then, I’ve stuck to free themes that I modify just a bit.
Out of all the WordPress themes I’ve tried, I found a very select few that I really liked and used for longer than most. I thought I should share them with you!
My top 3 favorite WordPress themes
Make by The Theme Foundry. I’ve tried using this theme a year or so ago, but couldn’t get it to look the way I wanted at that time. Then a few weeks ago, I felt the itch to redesign my blog again and, this time, Make seemed to fit my current taste. I like this theme because it’s so easy to customize and comes with pretty good documentation. The Simple Start Handbook is detailed enough to help you customize your website. I especially love that Google Fonts is already integrated in the Customizer so you don’t have to edit anything in your theme files if you want to use Google Fonts. Anyway, I like this theme a lot now.
Twenty Seventeen by WordPress. I really love this theme. It’s what I was using before I switched to Make and I used it for almost the entire year. It’s easy to customize and has a cool homepage feature that makes your website look clean and professional. It really is one of my favorites and I would use this again if my taste and feelings about my blog go back to this sort of look and feel.
Hemingway by Anders Noren. This is another one of my faves. I think I used this one longer than I used Twenty Seventeen. It’s clean, easy on the eyes and customizable, too. Modifying it to look exactly the way you want may take a little bit of basic css knowledge, but it already looks pretty good by itself. Its creator, Anders Noren, is one of my favorite designers because his themes are so clean and uses gorgeous typography. I’ve used some of his other themes before (Garfunkel and Lingonberry) and I liked them all.
So, those are my top 3 favorites based on how long I’ve used them and how easy they are to customize. I thought I should also share the runner-ups in case you’re thinking about changing your current theme. I’m really into minimalist designs (you know, a lot of white space and beautiful typography), so you’ll see a lot of that here:
(left-right, clockwise) Azalea by Just Good Themes, Hamilton by Anders Noren, Garfunkel by Anders Noren, Maker by Theme Patio
If you like minimalist designs, check out my top favorite minimalist design blogs for inspiration!
