18 Creative WordPress Themes for Portfolios & Blogs (2018)

A creative portfolio theme for WordPress is the best way to showcase your past work and skill as a creative artist. Whether you’re a designer, an illustrator, a photographer, or any other creative, creating a portfolio website is a must if you want to attract more clients, show your skills, and establish your expertise with tutorials, tips, and case studies published on your blog.

But with so many WordPress blog themes available, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and finding the perfect creative WordPress theme can be daunting. That’s why in this post, we’ve rounded up the best WordPress themes for creatives that'll help create a standout portfolio and wow potential clients.

18+ Best Creative Portfolio and Blog WordPress Themes

The themes on this list feature several portfolio layouts and beautiful animations and portfolio effects that'll put your past work in the spotlight. You’ll also find plenty of customization and blogging features so you can show your knowledge and establish your expertise.

1. Dash - Clean And Creative WordPress Business Theme

The first theme on our list, Dash features a clean and modern design with four unique home pages featuring different slider types such as Fullscreen, Video, and Kenburn. Pair these eye-catchy sliders with a grid portfolio layout and you’ll have no problems featuring your past projects. Dash also includes responsive design, blog layout, plenty of customization options, and it’s fully compatible with the most popular WordPress plugins such as Contact Form 7, Visual Composer, and others.

2. Bridge - Versatile Creative Theme

The Bridge is a versatile theme with an impressive number of 350+ demo layouts that can be used for all kinds of creative websites and portfolios. All of the demos can be imported with one click and you can customize each demo both in terms of layout and the visual appearance. The Bridge theme integrates perfectly with social media so your projects and blog posts can be shared. It’s also optimized for search engines, includes gorgeous AJAX animations, and tons of shortcodes to easily add various elements to any of your pages.

3. Circle - Intuitive WordPress Theme for Creatives

The Circle theme is an intuitive WordPress theme for creatives, perfect for any designer, illustrator, artist that wants to sell their artwork directly from their site. Not only can you create a stunning portfolio, but thanks to the integration with WooCommerce, you can launch an online store with ease and drive traffic to it with your blog. The theme is also fully responsive, completely customizable, and integrates with Twitter and Instagram as well as MailChimp.

4. Uncode - Creative WordPress Theme for Artists

If you’re an artist looking for a unique and interesting WordPress theme, look no further than Uncode. The theme has plenty of different premade demos to choose from and you can easily showcase your past projects, feature your latest portfolio piece, and more. The Uncode theme comes with an easy to use page builder, a powerful theme admin panel, and more than 16 portfolio and blog layouts.

5. Shield - Modern Creative WordPress Theme

The Shield theme is a modern and creative Wordpress theme that was built flexibility and performance in mind. It features a clean layout with several portfolio and blog layouts and more than 15 homepage demos ready to be imported with a single click. Key features include:

• Parallax effects
• Video background sections
• WooCommerce/Shop Integration
• Retina Ready
• Powerful admin interface
• Highly customizable
• Font Awesome
• SEO optimized

6. TheGem - Multipurpose WordPress Theme for Creatives

TheGem theme is a great choice for creatives and creative agencies or business that want a modern and fast theme for their site. In addition to that, the theme is also a great choice for bloggers who want a unique blogging theme that'll allow them to stand out among the competition. You’ll find plenty of customization options as well as SEO optimization features. Customers love the flexibility of TheGem theme:

Great Theme, so many customization options. Love the flexibility and the list of new features. Its well documented and supported. Highly recommended!

7. Dropout - Creative Multi-Concept Theme

The Dropout theme is a creative multi-concept theme that’s suitable not only for creatives who want to showcase their portfolio but also bloggers, and business owners looking for an interesting WordPress theme. This theme makes it easy to modify the layout of any page or create one from scratch and you can also choose between several customizable headers and footers to create a completely unique website.

8. Kalium - Professional Creative WordPress Theme

Consider the Kalium theme if you want full control over the design of your website. With stacks of layout designs, powerful theme options, and drag-and-drop content builder elements, Kalium makes it easy to create your site in minutes. Gorgeous full-screen images and grid layouts are the perfect choice to feature images and photos, and the theme is also fully responsive and optimized for SEO.

9. Insomnia - Beautiful WordPress Theme for Creatives

The Insomnia theme features a beautiful and minimalistic design and it can be used for any type of creative website. Key features include:

• 18 unique homepages
• Drag and Drop page builder
• Responsive design
• Retina Ready
• Post format support: Standard, Image, Video, Gallery, Music
• Multiple slideshows
• Video and audio support
• Unlimited portfolio pages
• Several blog styles

10. Boo - Powerful WordPress Theme for Creative Portfolios and Blogs

The Boo theme allows you to create a powerful portfolio and blog thanks to numerous integrations with the most popular WordPress plugins, tons of customization options, and an easy to use page builder. You can create different portfolio layouts and add even more visual appeal with icon fonts. On top of this, the theme is fully responsive and loads fast. Customers praise the design quality:

The theme is just awesome, a lot of features, a great design quality and some other cool stuff that is easy to customize congratulations.

11. Avenue - Minimal Creative WordPress Theme

The Avenue theme features a minimal design with plenty of whitespace, which is perfect for making your past projects the center of attention. The theme comes with a powerful page builder and integrates with WooCommerce so you can easily start an online store.

12. Jevelin - Bold WordPress Creative Theme

The Jevelin WordPress theme has a number unique and creative demos that can be used a starting point when creating your site. You’ll find layouts for portfolio, blog, home pages, and much more as well as an easy to use page builder so you can tweak the layout. The theme also includes a powerful theme admin panel so you can modify colors, fonts, and other visual elements. On top of this, Jevelin is responsive, integrates with WooCommerce, and is optimized for SEO.

13. Eurybia - Dark WordPress Portfolio Theme

Try the Eurybia WordPress theme if you’re after a dark color scheme. This theme has a homepage focused on showcasing your portfolio and it comes with a number of inner pages which are perfect for adding your blog, about, and similar pages. Key features include:

• Grid, Masonry, Portfolio and Gallery Styles
• Multilingual support using WPML plugin
• Pricing tables
• Blog single page
• Parallax effects
• Retina ready
• Responsive Video support
• SEO optimized
• Google Fonts support
• Contact Form 7 support
• And more

14. Brooklyn - Elegant WordPress Theme for Creatives

The Brooklyn theme is a great choice if you’re looking for an elegant and versatile theme. You’ll find more than 40 premade layouts that can be imported with a single click, hundreds of customization options, a drag and drop page builder, and several portfolio and gallery styles to showcase your work. Customers love the regular addition of new features:

Holy Moly, all these new features! Using this theme for a few years now and so happy to see the continuous theme evolvement. Cheers!

15. Richter - Creative WordPress Blog Theme

The Richter theme is a responsive WordPress blog theme with clean and minimal design. It was built with SEO in mind and it includes a ton of custom options like social icons, buttons, widgets, and much more. The Richter theme loads fast and integrates with MailChimp.

16. Norebro - Creative WordPress Theme

The Norebro theme is perfect for corporate and professional portfolios and blogs. The theme features a clean design and comes equipped with the most popular page builder plugin and a powerful theme admin panel. You can choose from over 30+ demo concepts and use shortcodes to add an element you need to your pages.

17. Kaster - Creative Theme for WordPress Blogs

The Kaster theme comes with a beautiful parallax effect, which is perfect for adding a little extra flair to your portfolio projects and sections. Aside from the portfolio page, the theme is perfect for creative bloggers who want large featured images. You’ll also find pricing tables, multiple sliders, and several shortcodes.

18. Pofo - Creative Blog and Portfolio WordPress Theme

The Pofo theme features a responsive and modern design with hundreds of elements and over 200 pre-built templates. You can customize every aspect of your website, create unique page layouts, and create beautiful content in a creative way with the help of Revolution Slider.

19. Freelo WP - Quirky Creative WordPress Theme

The Freelo WP theme features a quirky and modern design perfect for freelancers, designers, creatives, and anyone else who wants a fun way to present their past projects. The theme is translation-ready and comes with multiple portfolio layouts as well as customization options for each individual page so you can create a truly unique site.

20. Roneous - WordPress Theme for Creative Websites

The Roneous WordPress theme can be used for any type of website, whether you want to create a powerful portfolio or a beautiful blog. The theme comes bundled with a powerful page builder plugin so you can easily tweak existing layouts, add extra elements or build a page from scratch. You’ll find numerous blog and portfolio layouts, responsive design, and tons of customization options.

Five Tips to Create an Effective Creative WordPress Portfolio Website

Once you've got your website setup with a brand new creative WordPress theme, there are a few more things to keep in mind if you want your portfolio to be effective.

1. Feature Your Best Work

While you might be tempted to feature every past project you’ve ever done, you'll wind up diluting the quality of your work and overwhelming potential clients. Reserve your portfolio only for your best projects and showcase between 10 to 15 projects at a time. Not only will it reduce the overwhelm, it'll also help your site load faster due to less images and photos.

2. Share Details and Case Studies on the Blog

Writing an accompanying blog post or a case study helps potential clients understand your work process and gives them a taste of what it would be like working with you. They'll be able to tell if your creative vision would be in line with theirs, which in turn helps you eliminate clients that aren’t a good fit.

3. Make Sure Your Portfolio Images Have Alt Tags

Adding alt tags to every image and photo in your portfolio helps search engines understand what the photo is about and gives them additional information about your site. This increases your SEO rank, which means you've got better chances of getting and driving organic traffic to your site.

4. Include a CTA Below Individual Projects

Add a call to action below individual portfolio projects. You can link to your project questionnaire form, hire me page, contact page or your email sign up form. Don’t assume visitors know what you want them to do—tell them. By doing so, you'll increase your conversion rate and make it easy for potential clients to hire you.

5. Include a Pinterest-Friendly Image For Your Portfolio Projects

The last tip is to include a Pinterest-friendly graphic to each of your portfolio projects. This will make it easy for visitors to pin them to their boards and help you drive traffic from Pinterest, which is considered to be the third largest search engine in the world and is used by many as an inspiration board.

Create a Stunning Portfolio Website With One of the Coolest WordPress Themes for Creatives

Creating a stunning portfolio website is easy thanks to WordPress and numerous creative WordPress themes. Use our roundup as a starting point and if you want to see even more themes, browse the full collection of creative portfolio WordPress themes to find the perfect one for your portfolio site.