Writing is an art and deserves to be promoted in its own special way. There is no denying that the online world has opened up doors for many, not only to write but also to publish their work. And those that do embrace digital publishing, tend to lean towards platforms like WordPress to resolve their editorial needs. Indeed, WordPress is well-known for being a writers’ paradise. So many themes, and so many plugins. And such a large community — you can simply never run out of reasons to love WordPress!
That being said, WordPress is also a diverse platform. Writers aren’t all the same, just like two different stories can never be told the same way. We all have a style preference, a special personality trait or a characteristic. Something that defines who we are, if only in the digital world. So, for today’s roundup, we will focus on the best minimal WordPress themes for writers!
What is a minimal theme? Well, generally, a minimal theme is less about colorful appearances and more about the content presentation. A minimal theme makes way to highlight your words in a way that’s easy to read, and easy to save for future reading. And despite the growing popularity for WordPress themes, minimal designs can still be rare to come across. This article is going to showcase some of the best minimal themes you can find, which includes free and premium designs.
Boyo
Boyo’s exceptional design presentation makes this theme feel truly minimalistic. And once you explore what’s under the hood, it’s evident that Boyo is built on sturdy modern design principles. The style is clean and neat, giving an emphasis to both content photos and written typography.
Despite its definitive minimalist design, Boyo can still deliver a modern blogging experience. Namely, there are 8 types of posts that you can publish. Links, quotes, images, videos, galleries, and of course, traditional posts. Post design is all about clean typography, which means better readability for your readers.
Great features:
- Two unique homepage layouts. One’s for true minimalists and personal authors. The other one, for blogs that publish content frequently.
- Minimalist sites aren’t known for their colors. But, it’s nice to have options. Boyo adds a flexible color customization dashboard, which lets you customize the background color for many of the theme’s elements.
- Rather than adding a full-on featured slider, Boyo implements a ‘sticky post’ feature. You can make a post sticky by marking it so within the post management dashboard.
Envy Blog Pro
Envy Blog Pro is minimal, stylish, responsive and accurate WordPress theme designed for creating an minimalist website with portfolio, striking photo galleries, professional blog and any other stunning pages. Different layout variations, post formats, elegant typography, background color, image or video, 4 different buttons with a custom link, built-in custom widgets, WooCommerce support, it’s all included in Envy Blog Pro theme.
The theme is very easy to use, drag & drop any block and position where you want, upload media, add a creative description and you are all set. Envy Blog Pro gives you absolute freedom for your creativity and inspiration. Overall, everything is mobile-ready right from the start.
Great features:
- Envy Blog Pro supports various layouts, adjustable sidebar position, different post format: standard, gallery, link, quote, video & audio.
- The elegant appearance of text, included more than 750 Google fonts with font family, variant & subsets.
- Built-in custom widgets for quick and easy content creation and WooCommerce support to design a clean and minimal shop.
Pencil
Pencil has a little bit of a retro vibe attached to its design base. The template is based on four parts: a grid layout, featured image overlay, a featured slider, and lastly, the posts template. Anyone with a little bit of WordPress experience can narrow down the homepage to a simple links-only style blog.
Overall, Pencil aims to help to present your content in as minimalistic of a way as possible. Since the theme utilizes only a fraction of modern WordPress functions, it’s also really fast! Content editing is simple, and there’s a lot of room for crafting story-based posts that keep readers captivated. Even more so now that Gutenberg is available for all blogs.
Great features:
- With Pencil WordPress theme you can display your content in the best possible way. 3 homepage layouts it’s the best way to show your content. Now you can easily create your own unique layout and style.
- An exclusive content slider for the homepage. Customize its layout, choose a number of posts to show, and specify custom size dimensions.
- Built based on a responsive mobile-first principle. As a result, the Pencil theme works across smartphones without causing design inconsistencies.
Independent Publisher
Independent Publisher is an excellent choice from both minimalism (writing) and development perspective. As far as minimalism goes, IP is a strictly-content style theme. Meaning, there’s not a whole lot of stuff going on other than the presentation of your posts. A nice sidebar is added that you can populate with links and stuff. That same sidebar is found within the post-entry-content container, showcasing author bio.
On the development side, IP works as a skeleton theme of sorts. You get all the basic functionality, but with the exception of an added style-quality guide to follow. Also, anyone can contribute to the open development through GitHub. Open tickets, submit new features or help resolve an existing issue. Overall, it’s a pleasant theme to work with, with fundamental necessities already fulfilled.
Great features:
- A brilliant sticky-content integration. The post is stickied to the homepage with a gray background, making this feature accessible for those who wish to turn this theme into a personal portfolio presentation.
- Several thousand existing users. It’s quick and easy to find help when you need it. And there’s plenty of inspiration floating around on how to design your IP site.
- One of the nicest-looking implementations for the content presentation that you can find in any true-minimal theme.
Understrap
UnderStrap is a concunction of three separate development tools: Bootstrap 4, Underscores, and SASS (CSS compiler). The end-result is UnderStrap — a framework/theme that’s based on the skeleton principle. The idea is that you can quickly create a personal minimalist site for all your writing needs. And should you wish to skip the development process, just choose from any of the pre-built themes; Draft, Base, Core, and many more that can be found on GitHub.
A lot of the site’s areas are widgetized, which means you can either remove the widgets or use them to highlight specific information. Other than that, Understrap is an ideal choice that puts content first above everything else. Besides, Bootstrap 4 is nice to work with, and as a framework delivers exceptional customization options. Needless to say, Understrap comes integrated with custom post-types, page layouts, and things like hero sections.
Great features:
- Active development community, with more than 2,000+ stars on GitHub. Get answers to pressing questions in a reasonable timeframe.
- Integrated support for WooCommerce. Write stories and sell products alongside one another.
- Extremely lighweight, which is especially good if you write content-heavy stories.
Blaskan
Blaskan has a nice and chill vibe to its design style. There’s nothing that gets into your eyes so as to distract your attention. It’s also lightweight, making each page and post-load as seamlessly as possible. A full-width multi-column footer at the bottom helps to tie together a business-oriented structure. Writers can often forget the value of self-promotion, such as social media and displaying previously published works. With a theme like Blaskan — you can focus on both writing and promotional stuff.
All in all, we can see how Blaskan would fit into multiple categories. If you wish to go for that true-minimal style though, we recommend exploring the possibility of removing post excerpts. Also, it’s debatable whether you need the header section with a featured image. On the other hand, if you want to operate a minimal magazine or a blog — then, in that case, all elements make perfect sense to keep the way they are.
Great features:
- A thorough documentation, with each major theme segmented explained through a video tutorial.
- An attractive widget for adding author information; photograph, bio description, and social links.
- Clean code, so you can remove whatever elements you don’t like without much of a hassle.
GutenMag
GutenMag is a Gutenberg-powered WordPress theme by yours truly. Hindsight, GutenMag is advertised as a magazine theme and blogging theme at most. So, you might be wondering, is it a good fit for writers who love minimal design? And the answer is, yes. We believe that GutenMag has the customization capacity to leave room only for important content to be displayed. Further, our layouts for blog posts are some of the nicest you can find!
Designing a homepage layout from your content editor sounds unheard of, doesn’t it? Well, GutenMag is here to change that belief. Our custom Blocks for displaying content are tailored for numerous specific niches. However, as someone who loves minimalism in combination with writing, we recommend checking out the content display blocks from lifestyle but also beauty demo sites.
Great features:
- A range of exclusive post styles, surely to make your content stand out under any circumstance.
- The power of Gutenberg. Use WordPress’s new content editor to design pages, write posts, and add custom blocks.
- Share stories, quotes, lists, videos, and more — each with its personal post format.
Blogman
Blogman embodies just about everything from the modern perspective. As a Gutenberg-first theme, the Blogman stands out with a distinct templating system that’s going to make content publishing easy and effortless. This theme feels professional from the getgo, it has a freelance / creative artist vibe permeating its structure, but overall, Awaiken developers are trying to make this a typography-based design.
Large content titles combined with intricate UX design makes Blogman feel solid. Posts themselves use Gutenberg, so it’s up to you how thin or rich you wish to make your content posts. On the feature side, Blogman supports popular plugins like Disqus, Contact Form 7, and MailChimp. So, even when you’re writing minimalistic posts, you can still garner email subscribers and blog comments.
Great features:
- Customizer compatible. Take charge of small and big site elements.
- Custom pages and layouts that you can import within a single click.
- Modern features like Instagram feeds, sticky headers and posts, and custom post formats.
Kutak
Kutak introduces creative aspects into a minimal design, whilst retaining a content-focused framework. This theme, alongside its numerous customization options, is a wonderful choice for writers, bloggers, and digital professionals looking to create a home base for their work. The minimalist nature of this theme contributes to the factor of performance, which is absolutely stellar. Page speed reports are well in the 99% range — ensuring quick load times and an enjoyable reading experience.
In order to get out of its own way, Kutak implements cutting-edge features like a massive menu navigation. Also, widgets that display related content and provides other content suggestions. Further, you can activate Infinity Scroll — a feature that continues to load content without needing to change pages. And most importantly, Kutak meets the robust requirements of modern search engines. Which makes this theme truly SEO-optimized.
Great features:
- Each section is built with performance in mind. Image lazy loading is built inside the theme itself.
- Minimal enough to fit the needs of sophisticated writers, but flexible enough to be turned into a content magazine!
- Created by an experienced group of developers with thousands of premium theme sales.
Ofelia
If you love using photos and enjoy telling stories, then Ofelia is an interesting choice. This travel-oriented theme caters to both professionals and independent writers alike. Overall, Ofelia feels clean, with modern elements, and a fully responsive design. Writers who enjoy personalizing their WordPress blog, for sure have a lot to gain by working with this theme in particular. Using a seamless design base, Ofelia offers customization options unlike anything else.
Want to fixate the header? Easy peasy. Wish to change an article layout? Just apply any of the provided layouts. Same goes for typography, colors, and visual files such as logos. Customizing each element is going to help with strengthening the personalization of your site. Built with Bootstrap 4 — letting you utilize some of the best modern design features on the web.
Great features:
- Theme management inside an admin-dashboard panel.
- Change layout for posts and pages with a single click using pre-built styles.
- Translation Ready: .pot file included that allows you to translate Ofelia into your own language.
Typology
Meks managed to find the perfect balance when creating Typology; a text-based theme for writers. More than 2,000 sales so far, and the theme is kept updated to meet the standards of the latest WordPress features. As a typography-based theme, you can expect to see most of the focus dedicated to content titles and presentation. And even then, where Typology lacks in photography, it makes up for it in a smooth user experience.
The homepage uses three different sections to present content: cover area, intro, and the posts section. You can modify each section individually, and also choose which sections to show or hide. Further, there’s a fine-tuning dashboard for all your typography needs.
Great features:
- Even if you’re not a fan of much customization, it’s still nice to know that you can change colors, add logos, and otherwise create a unique brand-feeling to your site.
- Your content will scale seamlessly on all of today’s modern devices including desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones.
- Do you like designing content? You’ll love the provided shortcodes in this theme! There are drop caps, pull quotes, tabs, icons, and other nifty elements.
Impose
Pixelwars has a talent for crafting delicate WordPress themes. And Impose is no exception. This crafty theme showcases how minimalism can meet modern design in style! Despite utilizing many modern elements, Impose manages to keep a low-profile whilst ensuring a stellar user experience.
The intro section features a headline with a photo of yourself. The headline supports animated text so that you can add multiple different bylines for who you are. Also, there’s an inbuilt widget for content boxes. List important links and make them accessible to your readers firsthand. Post display, at least on the homepage, is shown through a traditional Date & Title listicle. That’s as minimal as it gets.
Great features:
- Universal responsive design. Images, videos, and other types of media are automatically scaled down based on screen size.
- Unified blog system. Impose supports all known WordPress post formats.
- Widgets for Instagram, Trending Posts, MailChimp, Related Posts, and more.
Writing
This timeless theme has snagged more than 3,000 customers over the last 4 years. That’s a fairly good number for a theme that focuses solely on the blogging and writing aspect of things. Writing is best known for its nominal use of color, and thoughtfully aligned content elements. The theme mixes together the ideology of minimal and modern, which yields a sleek and clean experience. Also, using Writing requires little to no effort. You don’t even need to have used WordPress before to still excel in publishing content.
Great features:
- Simplicity is the main priority. Everything revolves around the idea of readability and user engagement.
- Clean codebase with an attentive approach to SEO markup. Get your posts in front of search engines effortlessly!
- Go as minimal as you like. Layouts and posts all have unique styles, pick what you like and stick to it!
Thoughts
Sometimes, all you need is a place to share your ideas. And Thoughts is a theme oriented exactly around the notion of sharing, and nothing else. The clear execution of a clean layout makes your site look accessible while emphasizing posts as the number one priority. The default content layout is using a left-side sidebar, with a 30/70 distribution for content space. Inside the sidebar, you can add menu links, social media icons, and basic site description.
Great features:
- Simple but with modern responsiveness. A codebase built on robust HTML5/CSS3 techniques.
- Live Customizer — add or manage changes to your site in real-time.
- Custom modules for social sharing, related items, and numerous social feeds.
Typograph
Gutenberg themes seem to be calling all the shots as of late. The new editor is providing developers with a way to dive deep into the creative expression for design styles. Typograph is as simple of a theme as they come but manages to retain an immaculate composition for content display. Photos aren’t your thing? Not to worry, with Typograph, you can use typography (elements like drop caps) for highlighting something special and noteworthy.
Great features:
- Slow-loading websites suck. Fortunately, Typograph is powered by some amazing code to give your blog an amazing performance boost!
- Auto-loading for new articles whenever a reader has finished reading an existing post.
- Stylish and trendy design features — starting from content itself, all the way to author boxes, etc.
Starter
The Starter theme is an excellent example of everything that a dedicated writer needs to start a WordPress blog. You can’t get any more minimal than having a composition of mostly black and white design elements. Further, Starter’s clean layout helps to emphasize both new contents, and existing posts you have in your archives.
The author is promoting this theme through its WordPress-native codebase. Native code is usually associated with faster performance, and Starter is lightning-fast in this respect! Getting a worthy page performance ranking with this theme is going to be a breeze.
Great features:
- Semantic structure for different parts: header, content, and additional footer widgets.
- Full-width featured section to highlight your best piece!
- Compatible with the essential WordPress plugins.
