20 high quality free WordPress themes designed by Automattic
When it comes to WordPress themes, the last thing you need to worry about is the lack of choice. There are plenty of WordPress themes easily available that the only challenge you have is trying to decide which theme to select for your website. From free to premium and from personal blogs to online businesses to galleries, there are many themes to suit your requirements.
If you are looking for a professionally designed theme that is also well-coded to suit the WordPress application, then you might want to consider themes by Automattic, the same people behind WordPress itself. They currently offer a list of 33 high quality themes.
These themes are free to use for WordPress.com users as well as for WordPress.org users to download and use. Here’s a look at a 20 of Automattic’s most popular WordPress themes, majority of which have over 10,000 downloads at WordPress.com.
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Ever After
As you would probably have guessed from the name, this is a wedding theme. The pastel colors and simple layout makes it a beautiful theme for those who are looking for a suitable theme to share their wedding journey as well as upload pictures and videos.
Having said that, this does not mean that Ever After is suitable for weddings only. In fact, this responsive theme is easily adaptable to fit any other type of websites.
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Ryu
Ryu is a simple single column theme with good layout arrangements. But don’t let its’ simplicity fool you. It is great for displaying images and make them stand out! There is also a neatly tucked away widget bar of which also include a search bar.
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Superhero
If you prefer a fixed header theme, then you might want to check out Superhero. The header stays visible at the top of your website regardless of how far down you scroll. It also has an interesting color scheme of bright red and yellow.
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Chunk
Chunk is another non-fancy WordPress theme with minimalistic design. The first thing you will notice is the bold typography.
This theme is great for those of you who want a straightforward design and one that emphasizes on content. It also offers optional custom header, background color or image, custom menus and footer widget.
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Forever
This is another beautiful wedding theme, designed to make the documentation of a wedding, easy and fun! Forever has a bold and straightforward design with lots of space for you to upload your beautiful photos.
What is special with this theme is that it comes with a special Guestbook Template, where your guests can share their wishes and memories of that special event online. There’s also a widget that you may find useful i.e. the Milestone Widget, which is allows you to countdown that special day!
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Bouquet
Bouquet is a flower-powered theme, with lots of, well, flower-inspired designs and colors. This is also a single column theme but you are welcome to add widgets on the sidebar if you like. You can also choose your floral schemes i.e. Pink Dogwood (which is the default scheme) or Forget-Me-Not blue or Tiger Lily orange color schemes.
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Sunspot
After so many bright and pastel colors, here’s a theme which will make many dark color schemes fans happy. Sunspot is pretty flexible where it offers quite a few customization options like for the main page posts, header, background and two widget areas. You get to choose to have a one-column layout or a two-column layout. Should you choose the later, your posts will appear in a grid format with excerpts.
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Next Saturday
This is a playful theme which aims to bring out the innocent child in you with striking colors and bold layout. Some people even commented that the color scheme gives the site a 3D look. It supports 7 post formats i.e. quote, aside, image, gallery, chat, audio and video.
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Sundance
For those who are looking for a video theme for WordPress, look no further. Sundance theme is very clean and elegant. Despite the minimalistic design, Sundance features a video carousel for a maximum of 10 video posts. Again, this theme has an optional widget area on the sidebar.
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Esquire
The Esquire theme is an elegant theme that was inspired by the Esquire magazine. For those who are looking for a more dramatic and eye-catching theme, you will like Esquire. The left column is fixed and is visible not matter how far down the reader goes. Widgets can be placed at the footer area.
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Dusk To Dawn
As the name suggest, this theme offers darker color schemes i.e. black, blue and purple. It’s a two-column theme where you get to determine if you want a left or right sidebar or no sidebars at all. You can also customize the header and insert feature images. You can also insert thumbnail images for each post.
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Parament
This free WordPress theme from Automattic has a dark color scheme with orange highlights and textured background. While this theme may not be able to suit everybody’s websites, many have voiced their approval for this theme. Parament is pretty versatile and allows you to customize the header and add a background image.
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Pink Touch 2
I like Pink Touch 2 because it is cheerful and is easily customizable where you get to customize the header as well as the background. This single column theme even comes with three widget areas in the footer. It is a great example of a theme that has a great mix of color, texture and typography.
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Beach
Beach is a clean and easy-to-navigate theme. The theme conjures up an image of beaches in Thailand and the warmth of the tropical. This is suitable for those who would like to give their websites a sense of fun.
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Duster
Duster is an elegant theme in which you can transform your website into a showcase of posts and images. Customization of headers, menus, widgets and backgrounds can easily be done. It was also chosen to be WordPress’ “Twenty Eleven” theme. Personally, I like the sticky featured posts and the unique typography.
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Chaos Theory
Far from being chaotic, the Chaos Theory is a minimalist single column theme with a dark color scheme. There’s a navigation menu on top and two widget sidebars at the footer. This makes it great for displaying all your photos and designing works.
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Pilcrow
Pilcrow will appeal to those who like highly customizable themes. You will get six different layouts, multiple sidebars configurations, 4 default color schemes, customizable backgrounds and customizable header images. This theme is perfect for those who like to change their website’s layout every now and then but do not wish to re-install a separate theme.
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Caroline
This is a clean tumble-log type of theme. Caroline is one of Automattic’s earliest themes and is probably one of the more customizable ones too. With a custom menu, header, background, layout and 7 widget areas, you are free to personalize the theme to suit your requirements.
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Untitled
A very simple yet modern theme, Untitled incorporates some of the latest design technology e.g. infinite scroll and being responsive. The theme even has a full-width front page content slider which can help transform your site into an exciting and attractive site!
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Able
Able is a modern and fully responsive theme that is capable of capturing the essence of a traditional blog. After patiently requesting for a three-column theme, WordPress’ fans were rewarded with Able. A very clean and customizable theme, it is suited for almost all type of sites.
The last two themes (Untitled and Able) are more recent. Thus, they do not register as many downloads as the others which we have discussed here. However, I think these two are pretty good and deserve to be in this list of top Automattic themes.
Above 20 themes are just part of many awesome themes that Automattic is offering. They are professionally designed and you can be rest assured that they will work great on your website, even if you are using the latest version of WordPress because Automattic always keep their themes updated.
I hope you are able to find one which suits your taste and requirements. Let me know if you have any feedback or comment on the themes.