When you’re building a website with WordPress, one of the things you’ll want to do is give the design a unique look. In the WordPress community, there are well over 9,000 free themes available, and even more premium paid themes. So, what makes a good WordPress theme? Well, you’ll learn that and even about some of the best free WordPress themes to choose from.
What is a WordPress Theme?
A WordPress theme is the frontend design of a website. A theme has styling and sometimes images, or gives the user the ability to customize the look of a website. You can also change the theme to another and for the most part, not lose your content.
Consider a theme much like makeup. You can change your makeup any time, and even make it look different.
What should you look for when choosing a good WordPress Theme?
Compatibility with most plugins
Compatibility with both Gutenberg content block editor and Classic Editor
Fast loading out of the box
SEO-ready
Well reviewed and popular
If the theme has features that you need.
Compatibility with ecommerce plugins
Easy to set up after installing
Easy to use
Theme offers some customization settings
Compatibility with most plugins
Themes and plugins should work hand-in-hand with each other, without slowing the website down, or causing errors. Make sure to test your WordPress plugins with your preferred theme until you can be assured that your site will function as expected.
Compatibility with both Gutenberg content block editor and Classic Editor
WordPress by default comes with the Gutenberg content block editor, but if you’re an older WordPress user, you might still be using the old Classic Editor. If you don’t know if the issue is a conflict with your theme, you can always temporarily activate a default WordPress theme like Twenty Twenty-Two.
Fast loading out of the box
Your theme shouldn’t have a ton of pre-built scripts turned on by default, that could slow down your website. Hopefully the theme developer uses all the recommended WordPress.org theme basics, and keeps in mind speed optimization.
SEO-Ready
If you’re wanting your WordPress website to have a chance to rank well, it’s important that your theme is developed with a proper structure that search engines like Google can easily crawl and index.
Well reviewed and popular
Most of the themes that are the best, are pretty popular. While you might be deterred by the fact that a lot of people use a popular theme, and that there may be a lot of sites that look similar, you should be able to do some customizations to make that theme your own, so it coincides with your brand.
If the theme has features that you need
Choose a theme that has features you might need. Some example previews of themes can give you an idea of how you can place your own content. If the theme has a lot of what you need, but there are a few design elements or areas you need to add, you should be able to add them - whether you do it, or you hire someone.
Compatibility with eCommerce plugins
Your theme should be compatible with WordPress plugins for ecommerce out there, especially WooCommerce. You shouldn’t have to add too much styling, unless you have particular design needs for branding purposes.
Easy to set up after installing
If you’re new to WordPress, and you have a theme that you have to manually set up so it looks like the design preview, then you might get a bit frustrated. You should look for themes that have a wizard setup or one-click install process to get the theme up and going right away. This gets you many steps closer to launching your website. You can replace the dummy content and images with your own.
Easy to use
Your theme should be easy to use, even better if the theme comes with well-written documentation. You also should be able to find where to customize your theme’s looks.
Theme offers some customization settings
Your theme should offer some type of customization settings in some areas. For example, you should be able to change your title’s text to an image, if you have a logo, or be able to change some of the colors within the theme.
Free WordPress themes: Top 10
Twenty Twenty-Two
Twenty Twenty-One
Hello Elementor
Astra
OceanWP
Neve
Kadence
GeneratePress
Twenty Sixteen
Bravada















