The 20 Best WordPress Themes for Writers

Jenny Romanchuk
Jenny Romanchuk

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A well-formatted blog post makes your writing look more polished and professional – and who doesn't want that? The first step toward improving the overall blog perception is choosing a robust WordPress theme.

Person using one of the best wordpress themes for writers to make a post

In this article, you’ll find the 20 best WordPress themes that will help you get started on the right foot. They're all designed specifically for writers, with plenty of customization options and features that will make your blog stand out from the rest.

So whether you're a beginner or an experienced blogger, be sure to check out these themes.

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Why Your Writing Portfolio Can Benefit from a WordPress Theme

Once you set up your domain name and choose web hosting, your next step is to select the WordPress theme for your future blog.

There are several advantages to choosing out-of-the-box themes for writers, including:

1. Customization options. You have instant access to a wide range of customization options for look and feel. This means that you can tailor your blog to match your unique style and voice.

2. Features. Most WordPress themes come with a range of vital features like social media integration, email subscription forms, and more.

3. Support. When you choose a theme from a reputable source, you can be sure that you'll have access to support whenever you need it. This can be helpful if you run into any issues with your blog or if you have any questions about using the theme.

Now let’s walk through the best paid and free WordPress themes for writers.

Best WordPress Themes for Writers

1. Elegant Extra

best WordPress themes for writers, extra elegant

Elegant Extra is a super customizable theme pack for media outlets and blogs with a bunch of essential features, such as:

  • Category builders.
  • Post and page builders.
  • Reviews and ratings for articles.
  • Fully customizable look and feel, code-free.

Elegant Extra provides more than 800+ out-of-the-box layouts and premium support to help you get started. It also includes 7 different post formats: video, gallery, map, quote, link, audio, and text. With such a variety, you can test different post formats and find what works best for your target audience.

All themes are responsive to different devices, thanks to a fluid and responsive grid. So, no matter what device your audience uses to view the site, the layout will adjust accordingly.

Best for: Creators who want to experiment with content types.

2. Minimalist Blogger

Minimalist Blogger is a simple, beautiful, and easy to use theme for bloggers. You’ll get 41 premium themes that are all fully customizable. And as the name suggests, the theme has a clean and minimal aesthetic to really let your content shine.

Core features include:

  • Fully SEO optimized
  • 1-click website design import
  • Fully customizable from the fonts to the header
  • Compatible with Elementor
  • Lightening fast with the Pagespeed plugin
  • Multiple widgets to choose from

Best for: Bloggers looking for a simple and easy-to-install design so they can focus more on their writing and less on building the website.

3. Maktub

WordPress themes for writers

The Maktub theme is highly optimized for page loading speed, which can improve your user experience. Apart from that, Maktub has a text-centric and simple design that captivates and holds readers’ attention. Open a full-screen preview and feel the magic.

Core features include:

  • SEO optimization.
  • A GoogleSpeed Insights score of 100.
  • Five post formats — image, standard, audio, gallery, and video.
  • 10 styles for the homepage layout.
  • Two styles for advertising areas.

Best for: Personal, technology, and travel writers. If you’re planning to monetize your blog via AdSense, consider this theme.

4. Sayville

WordPress themes for writers

Looking for a minimalistic, light, and breathable layout? Consider Sayville's blog theme. Beautifully balanced, this theme will indulge your readers with a seamless browsing experience.

Core features include:

  • Responsive and liquid design.
  • Instagram widgets anywhere.
  • Social media icons.
  • Code-free ways to build pages.
  • A customizable look and feel.
  • Social media icons.
  • A subscribe widget.

With Sayvillem, you can also open your small shop and promote merch or other goods.

Best for: Sayville is your best choice for personal, lifestyle, yoga, and family blogs.

5. Mura

best WordPress themes for writers, mura

Striking and playful, Mura's theme is the best fit for bold content creators who not only share fascinating stories but also make money on them. Some layouts offer numerous advertising areas — seven block sidebars, nine theme sidebars, and advertising between posts.

Core features include:

  • 30+ amazing blog layouts.
  • A fully customizable color scheme.
  • WooCommerce compatibility.
  • A hero area to showcase trending posts.
  • A “Back to Top” widget.
  • AMP support.
  • An included child theme.

Best for: Writers who want to monetize their blog through advertising.

6. Poise

best WordPress themes for writers, poise

Poise is a clean, lightweight theme designed for food, lifestyle, and travel bloggers. It’s adaptive to all devices and provides hundreds of different page variations. You’ll also have access to unlimited color schemes to personalize the look and feel of your blog.

Core features include:

  • All default WordPress widgets.
  • Custom widgets for Instagram, promo boxes, social media, and more.
  • One-click install demos.

The main disadvantage of the Poise theme is a meager layout choice. Only two layouts are available. This restrains advertising options and out-of-the-box website customization. Though, it’s a great theme for those who love simplicity and want to quickly deploy a website.

Best for: Food, lifestyle, and travel bloggers.

7. Isla

WordPress themes for writers, isla

Authentic, elegant, and luxurious all perfectly describe the Isla WordPress theme for blogs and shops. Isla ideally fits for selling handmade products by attracting customers from organic search. It includes 4 layouts for vertical, horizontal, and square images and is WooCommerce compatible.

Core features include:

  • WooCommerse compatible.
  • Responsive design.
  • Customizable fonts and colors.

Isla also offers lifetime support. If you're just starting out, this perk might affect your decision.

Best for: Blogs that feature an e-commerce product. If you write about a product that you make or create product reviews, this is the theme for you.

8. Stockholm

WordPress themes for writers

Stockholm is a multipurpose theme with 140+ pre-built website examples for launching blogs, personal websites, or small shops for any niche. You can get your site up and running in minutes by importing one of Stockholm’s pre-built demo websites, which is a huge advantage for beginners.

Stockholm theme is SEO-optimized and fully responsive on all devices.

Core features include:

  • 900+ font icon packs.
  • Smooth CSS3 animations.
  • Limitless customization.
  • Social share options.
  • Video background sections.
  • Four included WordPress plugins.
  • WooCommerce integration.

In a nutshell, the Stockholm theme is a powerful tool for writers of any category.

Best for: Writers who want a full-service theme.

9. Astra

free WordPress themes for writers, Astra

More than 1.5 million people use Astra — and it’s easy to understand why. Users can customize their site without coding. They also have access to a huge collection of pre-built websites and fast speeds. In fact, Astra’s page loading speed is 0.5 seconds (yes, it’s just half of a second).

Core features include:

  • SEO optimization.
  • Quick loading speeds.
  • WooCommerce integration.
  • Yoast integration.
  • Fluid and full-width layouts.

Best for: Astra is the best option for new writers with a small budget as it’s completely free.

10. Writing

WordPress themes for writers, loft

Writing is a lightweight, clean, and neat theme designed specifically for blogs. All layouts focus on capturing visitors' attention and delivering a seamless reading experience. Theme developers have also created a neatly organized site structure to meet the latest requirements for SEO.

Writing is compatible with all social media and can create post previews for different social media platforms.

Core features include:

  • Responsive and retina-ready design.
  • Clean typography.
  • 24+ Social icons and share buttons.
  • A design focused on readability.
  • Unlimited colors.

Best for: Content creators and text-heavy blogs.

11. Inspiro

free wordpress theme for writers, Tap into the picture and video-focused WordPress themes for writers with Inspiro

Inspiro is a photo and video-focused theme with a clean and minimalistic design. It’s a great choice for creators who want to showcase their photo and video portfolio or educate their audiences on the subject with blogs.

Inspiro offers various features for embedding videos from Vimeo and YouTube and supports a fullscreen area for self-hosted video backgrounds.

Core features include:

  • A gallery module.
  • Full-width layout.
  • Page Builder integration.
  • Video support.
  • SEO-friendly code.

Premium (paid) and standard (free) theme options are available.

Best for: Photo and video-heavy blogs.

12. Blogar

best WordPress themes for writers, blogar

Blogar is an adaptive, trendy theme for creative, lifestyle, travel, and technology blogs and magazines. Unlike any other theme, Blogar offers dark mode, which looks minimalistic and rich. It also provides advertising areas to monetize your blog.

Core features include:

  • Ads Manager.
  • Fully responsive and mobile-optimized layout.
  • A dark/light mode switcher.
  • Smooth transition effects.
  • Yoast SEO support.
  • Mailchimp compatibility.
  • Social share buttons.
  • Six post formats.
  • Easy customization.

Best for: Creative, lifestyle, travel, and technology blogs and magazines.

13. CheerUp

free WordPress themes for writers, cheerup

CheerUp is an extremely flexible theme for blogs and magazines with over 1,000 customizable layouts. Food, fashion, travel, fitness, yoga, mental health, and lifestyle blog — CheerUp perfectly fits content projects of any type.

CheerUP is GDPR compliant with newsletter consent support and a tutorial on GDPR. This theme also performs well during speed tests, thanks to smart loading images that load only when visitors scroll to them.

Core features include:

  • A sticky sharing bar.
  • Full-screen search.
  • A fully responsive layout.
  • WooCommerce integration.
  • Unlimited color options.
  • 3,000 font styles.
  • Pagination styles.
  • Built-in custom widgets for advertisement, CTAs, popular and latest posts, and more.
  • MailChimp subscribe boxes.

CheerUp also provides free updates and new blog features.

Best for: With 1,000 customizable layouts, this theme is good for a variety of content types.

14. Authentic

WordPress themes for writers, authentic

Authentic is another gorgeous, minimalistic theme with a dark mode switcher for interior design, food, luxury travel, art, beauty, and fashion blogs. This theme unlocks 50 templates and offers four powerful plugins (Canvas page builder, reviews, advanced pop-ups, and PowerKit).

Core features include:

  • 40 unique post-block layouts.
  • A featured category.
  • Slider and justified galleries.
  • Share buttons and customizable social links.
  • Opt-in forms.
  • Scroll-to-top buttons.
  • Content formatting.
  • A table of contents.
  • A contributors widget.
  • Post views and reading time.
  • Mailchimp support.

Authentic is packed with powerful features for creating SEO-optimized and user-friendly blogs. It’s 2019’s best-selling WordPress theme for writers awarded by Envato.

Best for: Writers who are promoting both their work and a newsletter.

15. Read WP

best WordPress themes for writers, Read WP

Read WP is a minimalistic theme that empowers a smooth reading experience and amplifies visual perception. Highlight or put important text in bold, and there’s no chance a reader skips it.

Core features include:

  • A responsive and retina-ready design.
  • 20+ social media icons.
  • Customized video embed in various aspect ratios.
  • 3 blog layouts.
  • Call-to-action, subscribe, and download buttons.

Best for: Portfolio, science, fiction, and writing niches.

16. Neve

best WordPress themes for writers, neve

Neve is a customizable, lightweight theme optimized for speed. It has multiple layouts for personal blogs, e-commerce, small agencies, and startups. Neve stands out with its highly SEO-optimized code and easy-to-customize layouts for beginners.

Core features include:

  • Completely customizable blog layouts.
  • 100+ ready-to-install websites.
  • A review box.
  • Share buttons.
  • Progress bars.
  • WooCommerce integration.

Best for: Writers in search of a low-code, customizable theme.

17. Tracks

free WordPress themes for writers, tracks

Tracks is a bold and beautiful WordPress theme in dark colors for writers seeking to combine visuals and text. This theme is adaptive to all devices. Tracks also comes with WooCommerce integration and popular Elementor page builder.

Core features include:

  • Fast loading times.
  • WooCommerce integration.
  • Share buttons.
  • Text and image optimizations.

Tracks is a free theme that you can upgrade with premium features.

Best for: Minimalistic blogs and portfolios.

18. Gindur

best WordPress themes for writers, grindur

Raise your hand if you’ve been looking for an authentic theme with a mysterious flair. Gindur WordPress theme is what you need! On top of that, Gindur comes with a soft medieval melody to get your readers completely engrossed in the reading.

Core features include:

  • A unique medieval theme for writers and novelists.
  • Video, gallery, audio, standard, and link post templates.
  • A code-free building.
  • SEO optimization.
  • Social media integration.
  • The ability to embed video.
  • Unlimited colors and layouts.
  • Responsive and retina-ready design.
  • Subscribe box

Best for: Fiction writers and novelists.


One of the best WordPress themes for writers and novelists Gindur; demo version

 

19. Hedy

wordpress themes for writers, hedy

 

Heady is where gorgeous travel pictures meet text. Thus, it’s the best choice for travel bloggers passionate about telling stories from their journeys via photos. Different layouts, advanced color options, and multiple animation styles will turn your travel blog into an unparalleled reading experience.

Core features include:

  • Theme and plugin updates.
  • Video compatibility.
  • Three portfolio view styles — Masonry, Metro, Grid.
  • Page layout and width control.
  • Google Analytics integration.
  • Built-In Twitter, Dribbble, and Flickr widgets.
  • Advanced color, fonts, patterns, and background image options.

Best for: Travel writers and personal blogs featuring images.

20. Blink

wordpress themes for writers, blink

Blink is a simple but gorgeous WordPress theme for fashion, food, and beauty writers. Note: There are few out-of-the-box features, which makes this theme too simple for experienced bloggers. That said, it might be a good option for writers who are making their first steps in blogging.

Core features include:

Best for: Bloggers looking for a low-code, text-heavy portfolio theme.

Picking the Right Theme

When choosing a WordPress theme for your writing, it’s not just about the aesthetics of your website. Pick up to 5 themes that caught your eye and read their technical specifications. In the end, you want to select an ultra-user-friendly theme with a wide range of code-free customization options. This way, you’ll deploy an outstanding website with little to no effort.

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