Setting up a WordPress blog is not hard, but it can take a lot of time to make it look precisely the way you want. If you’re not careful, you can easily end up with a cluttered design that makes your posts difficult to navigate. Finding some options for simple WordPress blog themes is not as easy as it sounds, since there are hundreds of different options from various authors and marketplaces.
When it comes to building blogs, we’re fans of simple and minimal themes. That way, you can keep the focus on your content at all times. Plus, themes with less ‘frills’ tend to be easier to use and load faster for your readers.
Of course, there’s no shortage of ‘minimalist’ themes out there to pick from. The challenge is finding one that provides just what you need, and nothing more.
In this roundup, we’ll introduce you to our ten favorite simple and minimal blog themes. Let’s get right to it!
Elara Pro is a fantastic option for food bloggers. This theme is very stripped-back, so all the attention remains on your dishes.
You’ll also find that Elara Pro makes it very simple to share your knowledge. You can publish professional-looking recipes thanks to a custom shortcode builder. This builder takes lists of ingredients, instructions, and photos, and compiles them into a design that wouldn’t look out of place in a food magazine.
On top of that, recipes are designed to include structured data, so they’ll show up as rich snippets in Google search results. If you want to monetize your food blog, Elara Pro even makes it easy to include ads, affiliate links, and promotional callouts within your pages.
Price: There’s a one-time setup fee of $39, with one month of free support included.
Kale Pro is another example of a gorgeous food blogging theme, and has a simple, user-friendly design. Like our previous pick, Kale Pro also includes a built-in recipe builder that helps you share instructions and create rich snippets.
What sets Kale Pro apart is that this theme makes it incredibly easy to build a mailing list, which you can use to stay in touch with your audience. Kale Pro integrates with both MailPoet and MailChimp, giving you multiple email marketing options.
This theme also ships with an Instagram widget plugin, which you can use to embed your social media feed on any of your blog’s pages. You can tweak your feed’s style, and even customize its location.
Price: There’s a one-time setup fee of $39, with one month of free support included.
Ariel Pro is a useful theme if you want to launch a professional-looking multi-author blog. It includes multiple blog feed styles, along with a variety of header and slider options.
Using Ariel Pro, you can add stylish author boxes at the bottom of every post. These can explain who wrote the post, provide a brief bio about them, and offer links to their social media profiles. This theme also integrates with MailChimp, making it easy to build up your mailing list audience.
If you want to use your blog to promote and sell your own products, Ariel Pro also makes that simple. It works seamlessly alongside WooCommerce. Finally, you’ll get social sharing functionality thanks to the included Jetpack plugin, and can easily embed your Instagram feed using a bundled widget plugin.
Price: There’s a one-time setup fee of $39, with one month of free support included.
Rosemary is a whimsical, feminine blogging theme with a clean design. It’s an ideal fit for travel, lifestyle, and food blogs. Yet its versatile design means it can adapt to other types of projects as well.
With Rosemary, you get five different blog feed layouts to choose from, as well as unique post formats for videos, galleries, and even music. This theme enables you to include a short author bio on your blog, as well as link to your Facebook profile and embed your Instagram feed.
Rosemary comes with the popular Contact Form 7 plugin, which makes it easy to set up advanced email signup and contact sections. It’s also simple to modify using both the Block Builder and the WordPress Customizer, which means you don’t need to use complex page builder plugins to achieve a strong design.
Price: A one-year license starts at $39.
Alder is an effortlessly stylish theme that you can use for personal, travel, or even fashion blogging. Fashion writers in particular can benefit from this theme, thanks to its integration with WooCommerce (which makes it easy to recommend and sell products).
If you want to monetize your blog without creating a full storefront, Alder includes built-in promo boxes that you can use for affiliate marketing. To help you drive sales, it also enables you to choose from multiple uncluttered blog layout and post styles.
In addition, you’ll get access to five custom widgets. These include short bio sections, email sign-up forms, and multiple ways to integrate your Instagram feed with your blog.
Price: A one-year license starts at $39.
Writing may be your go-to theme if your primary focus is on offering quality content. This theme’s design is sober, so readers’ attention is drawn towards your blog posts from the start.
When you open Writing, you’ll see a minimal navigation menu and a hidden sidebar. That sidebar can include information about you, links to your social media profiles, and previews of your most recent posts. If you want, you can also embed your Twitter feed below your blog posts, to give visitors further insight into your writing process.
The blog posts themselves are equally pared-back. You get a full-width design that includes custom styles for quotes, along with easy-to-use social media sharing links. Combine all of those features, and you have a theme that’s perfect for a personal blog.
Price: A one-year license starts at $49.
Typology is a rarity among WordPress themes. It’s one of the only blogging themes in the market that eschews images completely and relies solely on text to make its mark.
Instead of featured images, Typology generates ‘hero’ sections for each of your blog posts, including gorgeous drop caps. The posts get full-width designs that include custom styles for headers and quotes. There’s also a sticky footer that shows readers the author’s name at all times, as well as an option to join the discussion for each post.
Typology is a gorgeous theme that’s perfect if you don’t want any distractions on your blog. If you dislike the default material design it uses, you can also choose a flat-style alternative.
Price: A one-year license starts at $59.
The Issue is a massive blog and magazine theme that includes a veritable treasure trove of customization options. You get to choose from over 50 blog feed variations, headers, unique widgets, and post layouts.
Every post you publish can include its own lightbox gallery, an author box, share buttons, and a counter to keep track of reader engagement. You also get unique styles for drop letters and quotes, as well as review sections that include pros, cons, and an overall score.
Depending on what your preferred layout is, you can use Adobe TypeKit or Google Fonts to spice up your website’s typography. This theme also lets you modify other aspects of your lettering, from spacing to line-height.
The Issue even lets you use a broad selection of reaction icons, so readers can share how they feel about your content. Plus, every layout comes with space to include ads, making monetization easy.
Price: A one-year license starts at $59.
Gutentype is the rare WordPress theme that completely embraces the Block Editor. This theme ships with over 20 unique blocks to help you build the blog of your dreams, all of which include a broad range of styling options.
With Gutentype, you can use an array of pre-built layouts, including options for creative portfolios, online shops, lifestyle blogs, and more. As far as shops go, Gutentype works seamlessly with WooCommerce, and it even includes a plugin that lets you take cryptocurrency payments.
Gutentype includes both light and dark skin options, as well as an Instagram feed widget. It also integrates with MailChimp, which makes it easy to set up a mailing list for growing your blog’s readership.
Price: A one-year license starts at $59.
Veen takes minimalist blogging to a whole new level, with a design that is easy to navigate and use. Plus, it’s a very colorful theme, so it’s sure to make your writing stand out.
With Veen, you get to choose from nine different blog feed styles. All of them make excellent use of negative space, and they include plenty of little details to make your posts look more engaging. For example, you can add overlays to your featured images, including approximate reading time, number of reactions, and a share counter.
If your blog has a lot of content, you can enable lazy-loading for its feed. That way, visitors can keep scrolling down until they find precisely what they’re looking for. Veen also supports Disqus, Facebook, and self-hosted comments, so you can choose whichever system you prefer.
Price: A one-year license starts at $45.
Conclusion
Regardless of what type of blog you want to create, you can’t go wrong with a theme that’s simple and minimal. The less cluttered your site’s design is, the easier it becomes for readers to find the content they want and engage with it. Remember that simple WordPress blog themes tend to be easier to read, boast a minimal design that does not look busy or cluttered, are faster to load, and have an easy to understand navigation and structure.
If you’re a hardcore minimalistic blogger, we recommend that you check out Typology, which does away with images altogether. For more professional blogging endeavors, you can’t go wrong with a theme like Ariel Pro.
Do you have a favorite simple blog theme? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!
