40 of the Best Free Responsive WordPress Themes
It’s probably safe to say that the majority of free themes aren’t worth bothering with, either because of bad design or hidden (malicious) code. However, if you know where to look, there are plenty of excellent themes. This is a collection of the best free responsive WordPress themes from trusted providers. I hope you find something you like!
Pytheas
First up: Pytheas. In the words of WPExplorer, the theme author, Pytheas is a ‘simple, yet useful’ free WordPress theme. It is that. It’s also clean and lightweight. The color scheme, white, grey, with hints of orange, is classic. The homepage has a responsive slider, underneath which reside 5 blocks, easily customizable, including the icons. Then you’ve got recent work, recent news, and a widgetized footer.
Pinboard
The highlight of Pinboard is undoubtedly the stunning grid, which is powered by jQuery Masonry. Fire up the live demo, re-size your browser and watch in awe as the differently sized elements re-arrange themselves in response. Go on, you won’t regret it!
Responsive
Simple and clean, Responsive would make a great site for a freelancer with services to promote. It comes with an impressive nine page templates, including full-width, landing page, content/sidebar and sidebar/content. Widget areas, such as the ones on the home page, make adding and arranging your content a breeze. Following a recent update, Responsive is now retina-ready as well as compatible with WooCommerce, the ever-popular free e-commerce plugin.
Accentbox
Accentbox is a professional looking HTML5 theme with a few widgets for ads (125×125 and 300×250), a Facebook like box and a subscribe form. There are two home page templates. As for customisation, the color picker empowers you to experiment with a nearly unlimited range of color schemes.
Frank
Frank is all about one thing: speed. Did you know that page speed load (the faster the better) is a factor Google takes into account in ranking your site?
Clean Response
Clean Response from ThemeFurnace is a free multipurpose theme with two homepage layouts – one for businesses, and one for blogs. Features include: FlexSlider, extensive theme options, Google Fonts, 11 widget areas, and more.
Lensa
Lensa from ColorLabs is a popular free theme for photographers with a fullscreen slideshow. Features include: the ability to connect and pull photos from your Flickr, Picasa, Instragram, and Pinterest, Javascript animations, 5 gallery templates, WooCommerce and Jigoshop compatibility, Facebook integration, and more.
Photogram
Photogram from ColorLabs is a free theme for photographers that integrates with Picasa and Pinterest. Features include: jQuery effects, Masonry layout, infinite scrolling, and more.
TumblePress
TumblePress is a Tumblr-like theme from ColorLabs that gives you the simplicity of Tumblr with the power of WordPress.
RPG.cod
RPG.cod from ColorLabs is a theme specifically designed for gadget and technology blogs. Features include: show the most popular post on your site first (headline post), display your latest tweets, Facebook and Flickr integration, tabbed widget, and more.
Adelle
Adelle is a feminine theme for bloggers from BluChic with a pink confetti header and minimal 2-column design available to download for free. Features include: responsive layout, theme options panel, custom widgets, and more.
Origin
Origin is a minimal and elegant free blog theme from AlienWP with a responsive layout. Features include: theme settings, breadcrumbs, custom background, lightbox, advanced widgets, and more.
Quiescent
Quiescent is a free photography theme with infinite scrolling, fullscreen slideshows, a fly out menu, and more.
Sonorous
Sonorous is a mobile-friendly theme for bloggers with infinite scrolling and fullscreen background slideshows/videos.
Hatch
Hatch is a free photography and portfolio theme with a simple design that keeps the focus on your images and a responsive layout. Features include: custom header, custom background, advanced widgets, theme settings, lightbox, translation ready, and more.
Oxygen
Oxygen is a free, responsive magazine theme. Features include: slider, custom homepage template, 3 menus, 5 widget areas, theme settings, breadcrumbs, lightbox, custom background, advanced widgets, translation ready, and more.
Attitude
Attitude is a free, responsive, retina-ready business theme with theme options, homepage slider, nine homepage layouts, 11 social icons, 4 widget areas, and more. Attitude is translation ready.
Business lite
Business lite is a touch-friendly drag and drop theme with a homepage slider.
Cornrows
Cornrows is a theme for bloggers and magazines with a dark design and integrated styles for Gravity Forms.
Gallery
Gallery is a retina-ready grid-style theme from UpThemes with custom layouts and color schemes, a live theme customizer, multiple language support, customizable header and background images, a sticky navigation bar, and more.
Zenith
Zenith is a responsive blog and magazine theme with multiple layout possibilities, custom page templates, integrated styles for Gravity Forms, and more.
Clean Retina
Clean Retina is a retina-ready, responsive, free theme with a clean and simple design. Features include: homepage slider for featuring your content, 5 post layouts, 9 homepage layouts, custom gallery post type, custom background, custom header, and more.
Response
Response is a free drag and drop theme built with HTML5 and Twitter Bootstrap with touch-friendly options.
GavernWP
GavernWP is a free, responsive them based on the GavernWP framework. Features include: typography options, Google and Squirrel fonts support, easy widget management, and more.
Versatile Church
Versatile Church is a free church theme with an adaptive layout. Features include: unlimited color schemes, homepage slider, upcoming events, theme options panel, widgetized homepage, audio and video support, and more.
Neuro
Neuro is a responsive drag and drop theme with touch-friendly options and built using HTML5, CSS3 and Twitter Bootstrap.
Classic Photography
Classic Photography is a simple free theme for photographers with an adaptive layout, full color control, homepage slideshow, photo galleries, widget-ready sidebar, and more.
CyberChimps
CyberChimps is a responsive drag and drop theme with touch-friendly options built using HTML5 and Twitter Bootstrap.
Dotos
Dotos is a photography and blog theme with Jigoshop compability so you can sell your photos. The theme also has a fullpage slideshow.
Good
Good is a free blogging theme with a left-aligned layout, Jigoshop support, a fly out menu, and more.
Murmur
Murmur is a free portfolio theme for showcasing your work and gaining new clients. Portfolio items and staff profiles are dealt with using custom plugins developed specifically for Murmur.
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is a responsive theme with a dark design meant for showcasing portrait photos. The custom showcase template allows you to browse photos horizontally using a scroll bar.
Zion
Zion is a free theme for churches with 4 color schemes, an adaptive layout, homepage slider, upcoming events list, audio and video support, widgetized homepage, staff page template, Google Maps integration, and more.
Simple Style
Simple Style is a simple responsive photography theme with 2 color schemes (light and dark), homepage slideshow, photo galleries, widget-ready sidebar, and more.
Fanwood
Fanwood is a multipurpose theme with 12 layouts, 18 widget areas, support for all post formats, and more. The theme integrates with BuddyPress, bbPress, Hybrid Tabs and Jigoshop.
Cascade
Cascade is a responsive blog theme with 12 layouts, post layouts, 12 widget areas, support for all post formats, and more. Use it to create a beautiful content waterfall!
Leatherly
Leatherly is a one page resume theme with a contact form at the bottom.
Auto Focus
Auto Focus is a free, responsive photography theme with 5 color schemes, photo galleries, widgetized sidebar, and more.
iFeature
iFeature is a touch-friendly, responsive drag and drop theme with a slider.
iRibbon
iRibbon is a fully responsive, touch-friendly drag and drop theme built with Twitter Bootstrap.
Did I miss a theme? Or include one undeservedly? Let me know!
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Hi,
I was going through the free templates and i really like accent box. I’m new to the whole wordpress process and it’s somehow confusing. I think from what i have learned so far is for example if you want to create a homepage the theme has to have that feature? Am an upcoming freelance writer, will the theme be suitable for me? Since you mention HTML5 will be finished 2014, does that mean if i want to add a plugin or widget i wont be able to do so?
Best,
Fred
Hi Fredrick,
First of all, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. It’s always nice to hear from a reader!
You can create a homepage with any WordPress theme. It doesn’t have to have that feature specifically.
As an upcoming freelance writer, I wouldn’t have said Accentbox was ideal. It’s more for creating magazine type sites. I would recommend Responsive, which provides a great base for freelancers to showcase their portfolio and promote their services.
HTML5 is pretty much rocking and rolling already, so you wouldn’t have any problems installing plugins or adding widgets to a HTML5 theme.
Thank you!
It was especially interesting to see Pinboard. I would have ignored it entirely due to it being associated with, well, Pinterest. 🙂 But wow, really nice features, and it’s visually very impressive.
I have used Respo on a site. It’s a little bit trickier to customize than others – in their zeal to use (and re-use) column classes all over in their HTML, they’ve made it tricky to write precise CSS changes. And some of the default functions in templates required some head-scratching to figure out. But for setting up a responsive site fast, it’s great.
btw, I see that you’ve done a mashup of “Responsive” and “Respo”. 🙂 It’s an easy thing to do, as their names are similar. I used Responsive on a site as well. That one experienced a “corporate takeover”, and there’s been some gnashing of teeth as the new Cyberchimp guys have shoehorned their framework into it, so Emil’s original code will probably be almost all gone. I’m not using it anymore, and I’m not sure how the new framework is going over. But the price is still right.
I look forward to trying a couple of the other ones!
Thanks, Dave