35+ Best Simple & Clean WordPress Blog Themes 2021 (Free & Premium)
Choosing a WordPress theme can be difficult. The latest trend for advanced multi-purpose themes means it’s easy to get overwhelmed by long feature lists. To help overcome this, we’ve put together a collection of the best simple WordPress themes.
To earn a place in this collection, the themes had to be simple in appearance, or simple to use, or preferably both. In this collection of the best simple WordPress themes, you’ll find options for creating a wide range of projects. From personal and business blogs to online portfolios and e-commerce stores, there’s a simple theme in this collection for most eventualities.
Choosing a simple WordPress theme has many benefits. For one, your website will be quick and easy to set up, helping you save valuable time and effort. Secondly, your content will be able to take center stage, rather than being obscured by fancy design effects and attention-grabbing theme features.
However, as these are all WordPress themes, you’re free to add any extra features you need to your site, via the thousands of plugins available for this website creation software. Furthermore, many of these themes have discrete control panels that make it easy to tweak or customize their designs as needed. This means if you find any of the designs a little too simple, in most cases, you’ll be able to enhance them in many different ways.
Simplicity is often overlooked in favor of wowing visitors. However, for nearly all projects, a fast loading website, that’s easy to navigate, combined with a stylish, elegant design, will deliver the best results. If that’s something you’d like for your project, here’s our collection of the best simple WordPress themes.
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Narrator is a simple and clean theme that’s ideal for personal bloggers and anyone who wants to tell their story online with WordPress. The different layouts in the library of templates all look great so no matter how you want to present your content, you should find Narrator has some interesting options for your blog.
Shree Clean should work well for a range of projects but this theme is especially well suited to creating stylish and minimal blogs and content-rich websites. The default homepage layout has a slider as its main feature that lets your visitors swipe or scroll through your highlighted content.
The rest of the homepage layout is devoted to displaying more of your content, either in the featured posts panel or the blog post archive list. The sidebar areas can also be populated with links to your other articles, giving your readers lots of options for where to go next after they’ve arrived at your homepage.
Although the overall design and style of this theme can be described as simple and clean, the extras, like the custom widgets and built-in slider tool, help to ensure that your website has a premium look, despite the use of a free WordPress theme.
Urbania is easy to use while also boasting a simple and clean design for your blog or online magazine. If you want to make the default style of this theme a little more colorful and eye-catching, the theme options and settings make changing the colors, fonts, and other display properties very straightforward.
Clean Blocks works well for creating business websites with WordPress. The homepage layout has an optional slider that can be used to present some of the key information about your business to your visitors, as soon as they arrived at your site. You also get access to a full set of blogging templates to help you use this theme to create a blog or add one to your business site.
Below the homepage slider is a panel for displaying links to some of your featured content and the areas of your website that you’d like to bring to the attention of your visitors. Other homepage panels make it easy to describe your services, share excerpts from your portfolio, and display feedback from clients and customers on the testimonials slider.
Although the free version of Clean Blocks does let you make some changes to the appearance of your website through a control panel, upgrading to the paid version unlocks more creative options. However, if you like the look of the free Clean Blocks theme demo, then you might not need to think about upgrading at all.
Gema is a great choice for bloggers and writers who are looking for a stylish and understated theme for their website. Like many of the best simple and clean WordPress blog themes, Gema comes with an impressive selection of blog post and article templates to give you lots of options each time you publish a new piece of content.
Responsive Blogily is a clean and minimal blogging theme that keeps things simple with an uncluttered design and layout. So if you’d like your content, including your words and images, to take center stage, rather than the design of your website, Responsive Blogily should be on your shortlist.
If you do want to add some more feature-rich content designs to your website, Responsive Blogily has been built to integrate seamlessly with the Beaver Builder content editor plugin. As Beaver Builder comes in both free and paid versions, you can add page builder functionality to your website with no extra costs incurred.
Responsive Blogily should work with all of the other best page builder plugins for WordPress, too. However, Beaver Builder was specifically mentioned by the theme developers.
Newsbeat has everything you should need to launch a blog, online magazine, or news website with WordPress. The pre-built content in the Newsbeat package covers a range of design styles including some minimal options.
While the appearance of this theme might be simple the list of features isn’t as you get access to a lot of useful functionality with Newsbeat.
Bloggist isn’t the most simple and clean WordPress theme in this collection, however, it definitely has a minimal layout compared to most of the other themes available today. Due to the large full-width header section, you can add some eye-catching visual content to your website in a way that isn’t always possible with some of the other themes in this collection.
The list of blog posts on the homepage include the post title and their featured image. This is another way that you can add some visual appeal to your website, while still maintaining a clean and simple design.
If you want to customize some of the visual properties of your website, you can make a few changes to how this theme looks. The options available with the free version of Bloggist include adding your own logo, changing some of the colors, and uploading a custom favicon.
SEA is a creative multi-purpose simple and clean WordPress blog theme. Some of the demos in the SEA package are more simple and clean than others but there’s a good range of options in this theme to make it a welcome addition to this collection.
As well as taking a straightforward approach to design, SEA is also easy to use.
Clean Portfolio is, as the name suggests, a simple and minimal free WordPress portfolio theme. However, it also has a full set of blog templates to make it a good addition to this collection. If you have content you’d like to show off, whether that’s from your personal projects or items you’ve created through your work, this free theme could well be worth checking out.
Thanks to the use of lots of white space and simple black text, your website will definitely have a clean and simple look by default. However, the images you add to your website and the other content you upload can help you add some more eye-catching elements to your website.
As well as having a simple design, Clean Portfolio also aims to be simple to use, making it a good choice for beginners and experienced WordPress users alike.
Sada is a modern WordPress blogging theme that comes with a clean and minimalist layout. The theme features 2 different layouts of premade homepage designs with a creative blog and content arrangements.
It also lets you choose from multiple header styles for customizing the homepage and it fully supports the new Gutenberg editor.
Felly is a creative WordPress theme made for fashion and travel bloggers. It comes with 2 styles of homepage designs that you can easily customize to make other types of blogs as well.
The theme also includes 4 different styles of blog post layouts, a homepage post slider powered by Slider Revolution, and has Visual Composer page builder for customizing the design.
Mindelo is a two-in-one WordPress theme with a clean design. You can use this theme to make either a portfolio website or an online store.
The theme fully supports WooCommerce and comes with a shop layout complete with product page designs, checkouts, and shopping cart. Thanks to Visual Composer, editing and customizing this theme is quite easy as well.
The Writer is a minimalist WordPress blogging theme made specifically for writers and authors who appreciate clean designs. The theme features an attractive slideshow for featured posts and a grid-based post layout with parallax backgrounds as well as video backgrounds.
The theme colors can also be changed however you like.
Zuut is a modern WordPress theme with an elegant design perfect for making a website for an agency or a luxury brand. The theme features a clean design with lots of sections where you can include more details about your business with a portfolio section, a team section, and a contact form.
It also includes Visual Composer and Revolution Slider plugins as well.
Kora is a minimalist WordPress theme for agencies and creatives. It comes with 10 different homepage designs, including one with a dark color theme.
The theme also features multiple portfolio layouts and sports a responsive slider powered by Revolution Slider. You can also change its colors, fonts, and even use WPML to change languages.
Acerola is a highly minimalist WordPress theme made for setting up an agency website, creative portfolio, or a minimal online shop. Built with Visual Composer, the theme is compatible with WooCommerce and WPML.
It also includes unique shop and blog layouts with minimalist designs.
Versaille is a grid-based WordPress blogging theme that features a responsive design made for personal and professional bloggers. To truly capture minimalism and make more space for the content, the theme features an elegant collapsable menu.
The theme has been built with Visual Composer so you can easily customize it however you like.
A minimal WordPress theme for anyone who needs to make a beautiful website for their portfolio quickly and easily. Monsterrat is a perfect choice for photographers, designers, artists, models and freelancers.
A minimal design for your website means that your awesome portfolio will shine through, with everything else disappearing away. Perfect.
Akea Blog WordPress theme comes with 3 different homepage layouts that allow you to create both personal and business blogs with ease. The theme works well with the new Gutenberg editor and features easy customization with its built-in theme customizer.
You can also edit the design using GoodLayers page builder as well.
Arianna is a clean and simple WordPress theme that’s perfect for blogs and magazine websites. This theme has five main homepage layouts to choose from, as well as a good selection of features and inner page templates.
Arianna also has full WooCommerce support making it a good options for creating minimal online stores.
Atik is a fast loading, simple WordPress theme for building online stores. By combining this theme with the popular free WooCommerce plugin, you can easily start selling products online.
Atik also has an impressive selection of blog layouts making this theme a good choice for bloggers looking for a theme with a clean and simple design.
Claue is primarily an ecommerce WordPress theme. However, even if you’re not building an online store with WordPress, Claue could be a good choice for your blog or news site.
To help you quickly launch a stylish website, Claue is packed with pre-built page layouts and designs. This theme is not only simple in terms of design but also simple when it comes to ease of use.
Takk is a fast loading clean and minimalist WordPress theme. The simple design of Takk does a great job of letting your content stand out on the screen.
If you’re looking for a straightforward but modern theme for your blog or portfolio, Takk is well worth adding to your shortlist.
The GraceUnderPressure theme gives you six homepage demos to choose from. Thanks to this, it’s one of the most versatile options in this collection of the best simple WordPress themes.
However, no matter which demo you choose, you’ll be getting a simple and elegant design for your site.
Luisa is a minimal portfolio WordPress theme. It features a design that will appeal to anyone who prefers simplicity to chaos and unnecessary complexity.
The simple menu system takes up very little space, leaving more room for your content. Thanks to the one-click demo content imported, setting up your website with Luisa is very straightforward.
At first glance, Bateaux and its 20+ homepage demos might not seem the simplest WordPress theme available. However, among the demos, you’ll find some very clean and clear designs that are perfect for creating an unpretentious WordPress website.
If your preferences change in the future, Bateaux has many optional advanced features waiting in the background.
The Simple and Elegant WordPress theme combines a stylish design with an uncomplicated setup process. Whether you’re creating a blog, an online portfolio, or an ecommerce store, Simple and Elegant is ready for action.
The package includes two premium plugins – Visual Composer and Slider Revolution. However, in the interests of simplicity, you’re free to leave them deactivated on your site if necessary.
Bonno is another versatile, multi-purpose WordPress theme. However, throughout the Bonno theme’s library of pre-built page layouts and templates, simplicity is a key design feature.
Whether you need a stylish blogging theme or a new design for your online portfolio, Bonno is well worth taking for a test drive.
Tao is a simple and modern WordPress portfolio theme. This elegant theme has been built specifically to help you promote your services or those of your agency online.
Even if you just want to create an online space to share your work, Tao has many features that can help you.
Vinero is a modern portfolio theme that’s focused on simplicity and elegance. Being both simple in design and user experience, Vinero won’t get in the way of your work.
Once you’ve imported the demo content into your website, you’ll be free to focus on creating more items for your portfolio, rather than fiddling with theme settings and options.
Purity is a clean and simple WordPress blogging theme that will appeal to minimalists. However, despite its simple exterior, Purity gives you plenty of creative options when setting up your site.
There’s a good selection of homepage layouts, a number of blog post templates, and many site customization options on the back-end.
Shiller is another simple personal blogging theme for WordPress. Whether you want to simply publish your latest thoughts online or share your advice, tips, and projects with your audience, Shiller has the high-quality design your website will need.
If the design of Shiller is too simple for your tastes, the theme customization options make it easy to add a little extra color and flair to your site’s design.
Oleander is a fresh-faced theme with clean lines and a simple focus. A dramatic full-width slider and striking promo boxes to showcase your preferred content will entrance visitors within seconds.
More than that, you'll see numerous layouts and post format options, various sidebar settings, and a robust footer area. Oleander and WooCommerce are the best of friends. With WooCommerce compatibility and crisp, uncluttered custom styling included, Oleander will ensure your store shines as bright as your wares.
Oleander Rating & Updates
Current Version
Last Updated
25 July 2016
Rating
New Theme (No Ratings Yet)
Oleander Features & Compatibility
Columns
Layout Style
Browser Compatibility
Documentation
Files Included
Gutenberg Ready
No
High Resolution Ready
Widget Ready
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