7 Best WordPress Themes for Bloggers (Top Picks for 2023!)

In this blog post, I will share with you my 7 best WordPress themes for bloggers. (Why WordPress? Because it’s the best blogging platform.)

While content is king, you can’t discount the look and feel of your blog either. Your blog’s design plays a big role in keeping people on your page. And if you keep people on your blog, it gives you a better chance of converting them into a loyal fan, an email subscriber, and a customer.

Much like when people enter your home, you want them to feel welcomed. That means your blog visitors don’t want to be hit with entrance pop-ups, text that’s hard to read, or too much clutter.

A bad blog design is an invitation for the user to bounce away from your site. Since bounce rate is purported to be an SEO ranking factor, it’s important to build an aesthetically pleasing site that keeps the attention where it should be: on your content.

Why you should avoid “free” themes

Since there are a ton of free blog themes for bloggers to choose from, you might be tempted to use a free blog theme. But what you’ll soon realize is that free themes come with a price. So when you use a free theme, you’re likely to run into some problems.

For example, most free blog themes:

• Severely limit your ability to customize your blog.
• Force you to upgrade to the paid version to make any changes.
• Are not optimized for blog speed, an important SEO ranking factor.
• Don’t get updated, which may pose a security threat from hackers.
• Aren’t being actively developed, which means there won’t be any improvements or new features.
• Offer zero customer support, so you’re all alone if you mess anything up.

Since a blog theme determines the look and feel of your blog, it’s important to avoid free blog themes and invest in a quality theme.

I say this because I’ve gone through dozens of free blog themes, wasted money hiring developers, and even wasting entire days learning CSS just to make a simple change.

Time is our most precious asset, so today, I’m going to save you time and money by showcasing the very best WordPress themes for bloggers.

What are the best WordPress themes for bloggers?

Let’s find out!

1. Astra

Astra Pro is the theme I recommend to students at Do Six Figures Bootcamp. However, it’s a great theme for beginners and pros alike.

I recommend Astra above all other plugins because of how simple it is to use right out of the box. After installing the theme and the Elementor page builder, you can import ready-made websites to set up your entire site in just a few minutes.

You can see the list of templates you can import here.

Here are my favorite Astra Pro features:

• Lightweight theme, with a loading time of 0.5 seconds
• Optimized code that’s fully optimized for speed and performance
• Mobile-ready right out of the box
• Use any of Google’s 700+ fonts, or upload your own
• Display your blog posts in a grid, masonry, or as a list
• Create a custom header and footer with Elementor
• Video tutorials to show you how to use all the features
• 24/7 customer support to help you customize your blog

Price: $59 for Astra Pro

Astra

This fast-loading, ultra-light blog theme is easy to set up and is my #1 recommend theme for WordPress bloggers.

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2. Thrive Theme Builder

From the makers of the Thrive Architect page builder, Thrive Theme Builder turns its page builder into an entire blog builder.

Though you can just purchase this theme alone, I recommend the full Thrive Themes membership. With Thrive Themes, you can access 30+ blogging courses in Thrive University, the Thrive Architect page builder, the list-building plugin Thrive Leads, Thrive Comments, Quiz Builder, Thrive Ultimatum (evergreen countdown timers), and more.

It’s pretty much everything you need to build a powerful online business.

Here are my favorite features of Thrive Theme Builder:

• Conversion-focused templates to get more email subscribers or sales
• Comes with a default theme designs if you don’t want to design from scratch
• Hundreds of pre-designed blocks like testimonials, pricing tables, product highlights, and more
• Fully responsive for desktop, tablet, and mobile traffic
• Global site colors so you can quickly change your main accent color across your entire blog
• Comes with a 30 day money-back guarantee

Price: $228 for all of Thrive Themes products

Thrive Theme Builder

I built this page using the Thrive Architect page builder. Now they’ve taken their page builder and turned it into an ultimate website/blog builder!

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3. Divi from Elegant Themes

To have complete control over the look and feel of your blog, you’re going to want to use the Divi theme from Elegant Themes.

This theme offers a completely visual front-end editing platform to create and customize your website how you want to.

Here are my favorite Divi features:

• Drag-and-drop editor to fully customize every aspect of your blog
• 190 layout packs to quickly build your entire website
• Huge library of video tutorials to show you how to use the Divi builder
• Install Divi on an unlimited number of websites
• 24/7 customer support via live chat to solve your design problems
• 30-day money-back guarantee so you can try it without any type of long-term commitment

Price: $89 for Divi, Extra (magazine-style theme), Bloom (lead gen plugin), and Monarch (social sharing plugin)

Divi

Full control of how you design your blog. You can use their free templates to start and then edit them to your liking.

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4. Avada

No coding knowledge required? Count me in. With the Avada theme from Theme Fusion, you can customize everything from the fonts to the menu, the header and footer styles, and anything else you can think of. All of this without a bit of coding on your part.

The 30+ member team behind Avada has been at work since 2012 developing and improving this theme. With over 650,000 installations, Avada is the best-selling theme in the ThemeForest marketplace and one of the most popular WordPress themes ever created.

Here are my favorite features of Avada:

• 74 pre-built websites included (one-click install)
• Live responsive editing lets you drag and drop elements into place to visually design your blog
• 70+ design elements like sliders, countdown timers, pricing tables, progress bars, testimonials, etc.
• Global styles to change your website colors at once

Price: $60 and includes free lifetime updates

Avada

Avada, from Theme-Fusion, ranks #4 on my list of the best blog themes for WordPress.

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5. Maker Pro

If you’re comfortable with making CSS modifications and your number one concern is the footprint of your theme, there’s no better choice than Maker Pro.

This theme is best suited for those who want to deliver a no-frills minimalist design to their readers. Maker Pro is an ultra-fast child theme based on the Genesis framework.

If you have a site where clean and crisp images are a must, you’ll want to couple Maker Pro with an image compression plugin like Optimole, and you’re sure to have a fast website, even if you have an image-heavy blog.

Here are my favorite features of Maker Pro:

• Intense focus on readability and usability
• Uses the Genesis framework, which means clean code that loads fast
• Clean typography, great use of white space
• Mobile-responsive design

Price: $99.95 for Maker Pro and Genesis framework

Maker Pro

Maker Pro is a child theme based on the Genesis framework and ranks #5 on my list of the best WordPress themes for bloggers.

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6. Neve

Neve from Theme Isle is an SEO-friendly theme built for speed and simplicity. The default WordPress install is only 28KB, seven requests, and loads in just 0.6 seconds. To make your blog even faster, you can use a performance plugin like WP Rocket to truly have near-instant loading times.

Here are my favorite features of the Neve theme:

• 80+ ready to import starter sites
• Plays nice with Elementor
• Uses Vanilla JavaScript (not render-blocking jQuery) for performance optimization
• SEO-friendly markup built into the theme
• 30 day money back guarantee

Price: $59 for Neve Pro (includes bonus Elementor booster modules)

Neve

Neve, from ThemeIsle, is a super lightweight theme that’s sure to speed up your WordPress blog.

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7. Hestia Pro

Another Theme Isle creation, Hestia Pro, comes in #7 on my list of the best WordPress themes for bloggers.

With over 100,000 active installations, this is one of the most popular WordPress themes around.

Hestia is on a bi-monthly update schedule, constantly adding new features and ensuring compatibility with other plugins and page builders. It’s one of the themes you can install, and be comfortable knowing there’s a team behind it actively developing and improving your theme.

Here are my favorite Hestia Pro options:

• Several different layout options to choose from
• All customizations done in the default WordPress Customizer
• Ready made starter site templates to have a 3 to 5 page website built in minutes
• Compatible with popular caching and minification plugins
• Improvements and bug fixes roll out every two weeks

Price: $69 for Hestia Pro

Hestia

Hestia, another ThemeIsle creation, comes in 7th on my list of the best themes for WordPress bloggers.

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Best WordPress tools to build a better blog

While installing WordPress with a blog theme is all you need to get up and running, there are a few more blogging tools I recommend to enhance the functionality of your blog: a page builder, a cache plugin, and an image optimization plugin.

• Page builder – Elementor

Your blog theme serves as the foundation of your design. Think of it as the skeleton of your website. To build the actual content within it, you need to use a page builder.

Unless you’re using Divi or Thrive Theme Builder, which are page builders, I recommend using Elementor to visually design your blog posts and pages.

• Cache plugin – WP Rocket

While your blog host and blog theme play a crucial role in your blog’s site speed, you also need a caching plugin.

When you serve up cached pages, visitors see a static version of your page. That means no back and forth queries sent to and from your blog’s database, which enhances the speed and performance of your website.

I recommend WP Rocket because it’s so simple to set up. Aside from caching, WP Rocket comes with other optimizations such as minification, lazy loading, database optimization, and more.

Since there’s a money-back guarantee, you can install the plugin to test it and see how much improvement it makes in your site speed.

• Image optimizer plugin – Optimole

Images that aren’t optimized can really slow down your blog. That doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice image quality, however.

I recommend using an image optimization plugin like Optimole to optimize, compress, and serve up scaled images to your visitors based on their display size. This way, you can ensure your images will load fast every single time.

Wrapping it up

There you have it, the best WordPress themes for bloggers!

Hopefully, my hand-picked list has helped you find the perfect WordPress blog theme for your awesome blog.

If you’re still on the fence about any of these themes, remember that they come with an unconditional money-back guarantee. That means you can take them for a test drive on your website and see if you like the customization options and starter templates.

Is there a WP theme you love that isn’t on my list? Let me know in the comments below, and it might make the cut in my next update to this page.