I’ve talked a LOT about using WordPress for your artist website. We even do pre-installed WordPress websites for artists. A handful of artists keep asking me to share my list of WordPress themes that work well for artists. I finally sat down and assembled a list of some of the best themes that you can install on WordPress. Take a look!
FREE THEMES:
WPFolio – is simple, sleek, and easy to use. This theme comes closest to ‘traditional’ artist websites. Get WPfolio 2.0 here.
f8 Static – a free theme by GraphPaper Press a huge image at the top with a gallery further down the home page. Very beautiful. Get f8 Static here.
Fullscreen – A non-traditional site great for artists who want to make a big impact with their work right off of the bat. Here’s a rendition that I did, using Leonardo DaVinci’s work. Get Fullscreen here.
Workaholic – another Graphpaper Press theme for free! This one focuses on a message at the top, integration of social media, and the gallery on the home page. Get Workaholic here.
PREMIUM PAID THEMES
Paid themes often offer something extra. Ecommerce integration hooks, easier setup, better code, or some other feature. I’ve played with a lot of premium themes. The following are themes that I have played with, or that other artists I know and trust have used with success.
Divi by Elegant Themes is a great fit for artists because it’s a theme specifically designed to make working in WordPress easier. Also, the portfolios and media handling are well thought out and relatively easy to understand. Get Divi here.
Striking – One of my favorite new artists, Michael Whitlark, uses this theme. It’s loaded with features, included a spinning and sliding header, a bunch of fonts, and short codes for all sorts of fun tricks. Get Striking here.*
Deep Focus – Kelli Bickman is a mural painter that I’ve followed for some time. Her site is built on the Deep Focus theme, and I love it! It does a great job of organizing her work into easy to navigate categories. Get Deep Focus here.
The Style – A little bit different, but great for artists who are a little bit different. I’ve seen some politically charged artists with a message use this theme to great effect. Get TheStyle here.*
Photocraft – this is great theme for those who do works in series or who have strong themes to their work. It’s built for photographers, but you can definitely use it for your art. There’s a slide show built into the theme as well. Get Photocraft here.
Helium – If you want your look to have that modern, technology feel, Helium is great for that out of the box. In addition, there’s a multi-column gallery layout that’s built into the theme, as well as a slideshow on the home page. You can see here a video embedded in the home page slide show. Get Helium here.*
Portfolio – Want a plain white theme with very little distraction? Portfolio does a beautiful job of showing your work. In addition, Portfolio handles all of your images as custom post types (in WordPress speak, this is the idea way to handle it). Get Portfolio here.
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More WordPress themes for artists
Are you making any of these common mistakes on your artist website?
Suggestions Welcome!
Do you have any great WordPress themes that you use for your artist website? Share them here in the comments. Got questions? Let us know!
Must Read: Do check out our definitive guide to an artist’s website for further insights, The Ultimate Guide to an Artist’s Website.
Hey Cory,
Great post. I also recommend Atahualpa as a great free wordpress theme, which is what I have used to create the blog embedded in my website: http://www.amiria.co.nz/artist. It’s perhaps not as slick as the beautiful themes you have listed, but it can be customised in a huge number of ways, which makes it very useful.
I am off to experiment with the themes you have listed 🙂
Amiria
Thanks for sharing these, Cory! It’s a great list (and I expect nothing less from this fabulous site!)
I’m on another premium framework (Headway), which is awesome (you can design your site by literally *drawing* your various boxes — for header, navigation, widgets, etc. — on a grid), but despite being easier on us non-native-techies than other framework themes, it’s still definitely not for the faint of heart. They all have their own learning curve…
I especially love what Michael Whitlark has done with his free theme. It’s beautiful to see what the artists in ArtEmpowers.Me can accomplish when they implement the lessons!
Thanks for sharing these, Cory! It’s a great list (and I expect nothing less from this fabulous site!)
I’m on another premium framework (Headway), which is awesome (you can design your site by literally *drawing* your various boxes — for header, navigation, widgets, etc. — on a grid), but despite being easier on us non-native-techies than other framework themes, it’s still definitely not for the faint of heart. They all have their own learning curve…
I especially love what Michael Whitlark has done with his “stock” theme. It’s beautiful to see what the artists in ArtEmpowers.Me can accomplish when they implement the lessons!
Fantastic post, Cory. What a lot of information! You are generous with your knowledge, as always.
Great information, Cory. I like the Weaver theme because of the ability to customize. I have a business training website and an art website that use this theme, but they look completely different. On my art website, I created a static page and most of the pages act like a regular website, but I still have the blog page acting as a blog. Also, I’ve used gallery plugins to highlight my artwork. Love to hear what you think or suggestions – My art website is: http://Wendy-Malowany.com
@wendymalowany Thanks for commenting! Your site looks pretty good! My only question is this: does it convert? Are you getting sales out of it? If so, great! If not, then what do you need to fix?
@CoryHuff I can’t answer that yet, since I only created the site early this year and have just got the payment processing set, but have to integrate the purchasing buttons, etc. It’s still a “work in progress”. 🙂 Also, I am currently working on artwork that needs to be completed for a May 30th deadline, so that’s taking priority right now.
very nice here is a good one also
i’m curious, using wordpress, how do you add a shopping cart?
@ARTacrobat There are many options. There are several free shopping carts that integrate with Paypal, and a number of paid options. Check out this guest post on getting paid through your site: https://theabundantartist.com/accepting-payments-on-your-website/
I’m socially awkward in a good way apparently… haha… It’s spring break for me!
well awesome themes Just love it
I created a theme for artists called Flatfile. It’s great for the WordPress novice and expert alike. Check it out at http://flatfile.ws
@AGoodHusband Thank you!
Thank you Cory for getting these together. Now I just have the hard decision of picking only one!
I’ve really enjoyed reading your different articles. They are so informative and interesting. This post give truly quality information. I’m definitely going to look into it. Really very useful tips are provided here. thank you so much.Keep up the good works.
Thanks for these great examples. I have been using the Custom Community theme for my artist site, but I would like to now add a shop on the site to sell artworks directly. Do you recommend I buy an e-commerce site or just add a plugin to make this possible on my current one? I look forward to your response!
woocommerce is a great ecommerce plugin
I like that Divi seems to be quite visual . I don’t know how to do coding but I have found both your (Cory) and other you tube videos easy to understand. I don’t feel so intimidated by the idea of wordpress now. I think it will be my choice for building a new website. Lot’s of time to get it sorted. So much to learn though. I also found a local service that gives one to one wordpress training. Depending on the cost I may use that if I get stuck trying to do it myself.
WordPress looks interesting 🙂 I have been using Weebly for a site (that I am now getting away from). Can you weigh in on Weebly?
Thanks!
Jessica
Jessica, It sounds like I’m at the point you were at in April. I’m following Cory’s TAA & AEM and I want to change my Weebly site to a WordPress one as sson as I get time. How did you get on? Good results?
I need to choose a theme. Maybe Striking or Deep Focus.
Did you unpublish or delete the Weebly to set up the WordPress?
Are there any good wp themes for artists using a vertical format? I want a home page showing my posters (3:4 ratio). Everything looks like it uses thumbnails which don’t work for posters or horizontal. I only found Grid so far. Thanks.
That’s a great question Leslie. I’ll dig around and see what I can find!
Hey I have a suggestion for a theme perfect for artists, actors, anything self promotion:
http://themeforest.net/item/selfy-responsive-retina-ready-wordpress-theme/5135896
thanks
thanks a lot, good post 🙂
I’m currently rebuilding my website fallenartworks.com using the Fullscreen theme mentioned above. However, a lot of my images won’t comfortably fit into the thumbnail size used in the theme…is there any way around this or do I need to crop some of my images so that they’ll fit?
Devin – I’d suggest finding a theme that your images fit into, rather than trying to make the changes. If you want the thumbnails to show your full art, you’ll need to do the cropping before you upload. Fullscreen is a free theme and so I’m not sure if the provider offers any support at all.
Cory, I’m confused. Neither Deep Focus or Striking are available on WordPress. I’m right at the beginning and I just need to choose a theme. I need to close down my Weebly and set up my WordPress buy because I need the option of selling internationally I need an option with a great shop etc so that clients can buy from me directly online.
Deborah, these are themes for self-hosted WordPress sites. They won’t work on WordPress.com. There are links in this blog post that will allow you to purchase & download these themes, but you’ll need to set up hosting services and your own site. Instructions on that are here.
What is the difference between a theme that says it is: SEO optimized VS SEO Ready?
Probably nothing. It just means that they have easy places to put all of the Title & meta information, and that the site code is well-built.
Elegant Themes just published a super flexible theme called Divi, which when used with the new Builder feature is a downright joy to lay out.
Spot on with this write-up, I really believe that this
site needs a lot more attention. I’ll probably be returning
to see more, thanks for the info!
Thanks Navrangi!
I guess for artist websites there should be more pictures other than text.People just want to see the skills of any artist through his portfolio website. So that I always prefer simple 1 column layout website for this.
This is a great list. Thank you. I just picked up a new theme today called WP Art Theme. Couldn’t beat it for $10 plus it’s really gorgeous. You can see a review here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAn1Kv0h4r0 . That’s how I found out about it.
Hi Cory! This post is really helpful; I love the designs you picked.
I have one question that’s been nagging at my mind for the past while…this year I really want to set up my own website, and I want to start free (even without a custom domain; when my income is more constant I’ll probably use bluehost for that). I’ve used Google’s Blogger before for private sites with close friends, but WordPress’s and Wix’s layouts stand out to me as more professional. So my question is this: for a young artist just starting her own business, which option (WordPress or Wix) do you think is better?
I know there are lots of helpful WordPress posts on here, so I’m thinking that might be a better choice. However, I’d love to hear what you think!
Thanks,
Bernadette
Informative post with a useful collection of WordPress artist themes!! I really like your collection and will surely use one or two themes from this collection, or will try to design themes by myself with the help of the template – toaster.
Photocraft, Helium, The Style wordpress themes are nice and will give an appealing look to related websites. Users may also design such kind of themes using a wordpress theme generator templatetoaster.
I think this website has got some very excellent information for everyone
I think so it’s a great resource for a newbie artist who want to makes his personal wp blog . I am eagerly waiting for your next excellent stuff.
Thanks for such a very nice post. really great post. Thanks for sharing with us. very useful stuff.
Beautiful blog with nice informational content.
I want to recommend you Probit WordPress theme. It is a simple and easy to use free responsive WordPress theme. It offers unlimited theme color options to help them change the look of their website and set their brand apart from the competition. You can make use of blog timeline template for Facebook like the timeline feature for your blog page. Visit here: https://wordpress.org/themes/probit/
What a lovely post for the WordPress theme. Thank you so much
Might be time to update this article. I found it from your Artist Website Checklist pdf (I’m in the current course). Two of the first three themes are no longer available!
Thanks!
I think so it’s a great resource for a newbie artist who want to makes his personal wp blog . I am eagerly waiting for your next excellent stuff.
WordPress themes are a good collection. thinks for sharing.
Everything seems pretty straightforward here, but I guess the main problem is to find the much needed time to blog when you are traveling. It’s not easy to sit down and write your blog posts when you know that everyone else in the hotel you are staying at is partying and having a good time!
Truly inspiring.. Matt i just started following you from few weeks. I am completely inspired by you and made my decision to have my own travel blog. I am travelling from last 3 years but never think of writing it. Your advice will be seriously very helpful for me and i think for others also.
Well list of premium WordPress themes for world wide WordPress users,.It is helpful because some times client asked me to find awesome and unique WordPress premium theme and nest time i will search here and provide a desired premium WordPress theme to me clients.
I really liked your article. It’s crisp, concise and very informative. You have not minced your words anywhere. Its really a hard work to keep running the blog. I have started blogging this year on July.. I write about various stuffs like my musings, travel logs, poetry. But travel stories are my favorite ones, as i love travelling.
Parallax themes really are a beauty. They are so different than anything else that you see. Most of the people say that parallax is only a small effect, but it just enriches the browsing experience. I sometimes get carried away and play for a minute or two with the sections. That’s why I prefer having it on my website – it’s fancy, trendy and it won’t hurt anyone.
I think that a WordPress eCommerce website is one of the cheapest ways to create an online store. All you have to do is get hosting, a theme, and eventually a plugin or two. For under $100 and about $20, at most, recurring monthly payments, you will be able to make thousands of dollars. And the best part is that everything is automated. There are some website builders which are trying to take over from WordPress, but they don’t offer the flexibility that WordPress has – WooCommerce is currently the most powerful add-on for creating online stores.
Wow, I loved reading your article about 11 gorgeous WordPress Themes for Artist Websites. I especially liked WPFolio, f8 Static, and Material. It was great to see some of the best WordPress themes for artists. Your article was a good resource for those looking for the best themes for their artist website. I also liked the article about online marketing for artists. I’m excited to learn more about this topic.