10 Best Minimal WordPress Themes [For Free]

It’s a well known fact that attractive design with a lot of color, textures, and design elements may attract your readers more towards the design than your brilliantly written content. A clean and minimal design gets out of the way and lets the content do the talking, because a minimal style is more appropriate for the content and it’s audience.

I love minimalism in web design. Minimalism as a term is used to describe a design style that has been reduced to its bare elements, were only the content and navigation are evident and with limited graphics. There is something pure about stripping out all of the unnecessary elements from a design. Its a perfect balance of design skills and good quality content.

Today I attempt to roundup the minimalist style WordPress themes, actually there are lot of choices from the database, and it is impossible to have the accurate list. As the result, the list below only focus on the professionalism and minimalism.

Minimal and Free WordPress Themes

Upstart Blogger Modicus WordPress Theme

Modicus now comes in two flavors: the original 3-column version and a new 2-column version. The new 2-column version adds an Options tab to your WordPress admin, where you can set column arrangement and alignment, etc. Modicus was designed by Robert Ellis.

Demo | Download

Modern Clix WordPress Theme

Modern Clix is a minimal blog theme inspired in the Swiss Style of Design: It features Arial/Helvetica, grids, a generous use of whitespace for better readability and a strong focus in typography. This lovely WordPress Theme is designed by Rodrigo Galindez. The name Modern Clix is inspired in Charly García’s album “Clics Modernos”.

Demo | Download

Manifest WordPress Theme

The goal of the designer (Jim Barraud) with Manifest was to create a clean and streamlined theme that focused on the content and not the distractions. It utilizes a single column, 500 pixel wide layout. No sidebars. No widgets.

If a user attempts to view this site in IE6, they’ll be presented with an unstyled (but perfectly functional) site. Along with a friendly message suggesting they upgrade their browser.

Demo | Download

Neutra WordPress Theme

Neutra is a simple and elegant theme for WordPress. Grid-based with focus on simplicity and typography. It has a grid like structure with a sidebar at the right hand side of the page. It also has a nice multi level drop down navigation menu. Designed by Artmov.

Demo | Download

Clean Home WordPress Theme

This WordPress theme is one with a minimal, clean looking design and has full CSS widgetization. Designed by Bryan Helmig of MidMo Web Design. This Theme has 2 columns with a right sidebar and with a fixed width.

Demo | Download

Aqualine WordPress Theme

Aqualine is a unique and minimalist WordPress theme, that you can easily make customization to suit your needs. It is packed with an extensive options page – easily customise your theme without touching any code: Pick your own colour accent, choose a thumbnail with excerpts layout, or display your full posts, amongst many other built in options.

Aqualine is a Free Minimalist WordPress Theme designed by Brendon Grobler and eFrog Themes for Onextrapixel and its readers.

Demo | Download

Blogum WordPress Theme

Blogum is a simple, grid based blog WordPress theme, designed in a modern & minimalist style. The theme has a heavy focus on your content and very clean feel. Theme supports all WordPress 3.0 features and gives you extra flexibility.

Demo | Download

Typominima WordPress Theme

Typominima, a free typography based, gorgeous, minimal WordPress theme fit for the writer inside you. If you’re looking for a free theme to help you put the content in spotlight, without worrying about it being suffocated by advertising space and unnecessary design blign, than Typominima is the perfect free WordPress theme for you.

Demo | Download

Miniml Press WordPress Theme

Minimal Press is a very minimal, three column WordPress theme, “founded on starkers” and “built on the golden grid,” according to siiimple, its author. Minimal Press is one of the most impressive, and impeccable, free WordPress themes out there, an ideal starter for almost any kind of site requiring a similar layout.

Demo | Download

The Simple Type WordPress Theme

The Simple Type WordPress theme was created with typography and minimalism in mind. It was created by Jon Phillips from SpyreStudios for 1st WebDesigner.

Make sure to check the download link, this is also the link to the tutorial for this WordPress Theme on 1st WebDesigner.

Demo | Download

Conclusion

High quality free WordPress Themes have become harder and harder to find in the past year, with the invasion of premium themes, more and more designers and developers are selling themes (and rightly so, because they make amazing themes).

Enjoy minimalism: great typography, white color, grid, white spaces and remember – very often simply good typography and great use of white space is a lot better than theme overloaded with effects, colors, images and too much CSS styling! Just wanted to say ..