Whether you work as a designer, a photographer, or a freelancer, you will definitely need to build an online presence via a website. Your social media accounts are not enough. In order to be credible, you need a website that is able to reflect your skills, know-how, and projects.
You can most easily make a portfolio website starting from good WordPress portfolio themes. We provide you a list of the best 15+ WordPress portfolio themes. You can use any of them confidently, and build a successful site that really represents you.
Guidelines for portfolio websites
Here are some basic principles you need to take into consideration when you start building your WordPress portfolio website:
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Present yourself, not just your work.
Apart from listing your best work, you need to introduce yourself. Say who you are, what your passions and hobbies are, what you are talented at and what interests you most. Be as authentic as possible, besides presenting your education and professional course.
I love the way Ivan Key presents himself and his work. By the way, this is a WordPress website.
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Present just your best work.
If there’s plenty to show in terms of work samples and portfolio, consider sorting them out. Do not throw everything in the website, only select the best work and present it as best you can. Including everything might be redundant, or deter users from getting to know what your strengths are.
I like how the individual project galleries look like for on the EthnicChic, an interior design company from Netherlands. The website design is minimalistic, with lots of white space, so that you can focus on the galleries more.
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Keep it concise.
Do not stuff the presentation with unnecessary words. Keep to the essentials, and sum up what you have to say about yourself as a professional. You want people to remember you as a brand, and for this you need a unique presentation. Keep it simple and easy to remember.
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Tell a story. Your story.
For the data to be relevant and expressive, you need to provide some context. And you can do this by telling your story in the website pages. How you started working in the area, what the early experiences were, how you continued and what encouraged you to follow a career path. People will find it interesting to read about the human side related to a professional evolution. Don’t neglect it.
Here’s how a Karolina Edman, Sydney-based branding specialist approaches this:
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State a mission and a vision.
Similarly to business websites, having a mission and vision is important for a portfolio website. Why do you do the work you do, what are your standards, how do you expect to make a difference with your work in your area of expertise, etc. These are questions that the mission and vision statements should answer.
Take a look at Land of White Deer (some of my favorite photographers). They keep it simple, and touching: ” frames of tenderness and affection… glimpses of the bond between two souls… LIFE – raw and captivating”.
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Last, but not least, publish awards and recommendations.
Awards and recommendations strengthen your presentation, and support your statements through third-party assessments. These serve as social proof, and have force to convince users to contact you for future projects.
Take a look at Dylan and Joanna, photographers and owners of the The Kitcheners. They are showing off their awards on the homepage.
Next, let’s see take a look at some WordPress portfolio themes that can help you build a website that can really represent you and your work:
- Colibri
Colibri is in the top 20 most popular WordPress themes of all time. What’s great about Colibri is the fact that during the installation it recommends you to install the Colibri page builder. This builder will level up the theme’s Customizer, giving it lots of powerful features. The theme has both free and paid plans. Here are the features we’re sure you’ll love:
- 90+ template sites for a variety of niches. If you want to create a portfolio website you could go for this artist template, this designer template, or even with a resume template. No matter what you choose, you can easily customize the site until you reach pixel-perfection.
- 150+ predefined blocks that you can customize however you see fit. A few examples include: about blocks, features, services, team, testimonials, portfolio, contact blocks, etc.
- 40+ drag and drop components that you can use to create completely custom blocks or customize the existing ones,
- Mobile-responsiveness,
- Easy to use and intuitive interface,
- Reliable support team.
- Pathway
Pathway is a newly launched WordPress theme (May 2022). What’s special about it is that it recommends you to install the Kubio page builder. Kubio is a block-based website builder that enriches the Default WordPress Editor with amazing styling possibilities, so that you can have full control over design. Kubio comes packed with starter sites that you can fully customize. Like this photography starter site. Now, here are the features that you’ll love at the Pathway-Kubio combo:
- 150+ predesigned sections that you can choose from that cover different functionalities: hero, about, testimonials, clients, and many more,
- 50+ drag and drop blocks such as headers, sliders, carousels, pricing tables, etc.
- full control over color and typography,
- Parallax, overlay, and dividers options,
- Mobile responsiveness. Customize colors, backgrounds, text, spacing, and other settings across desktop, tablet and mobile devices. Instant preview available.
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Mesmerize
Mesmerize can very well be your consultancy WordPress theme or your portfolio theme. It’s versatile and can be a good fit for a variety of niches. You can import one of the pre-designed templates, specially created for portfolio websites. Or you can make your site up from pre-defined sections in the theme.
The frontpage header designs provide a wide variety of choices, depending on your niche. Customize it for your portfolio website. You’ll benefit from plenty of customization options that will make your site memorable.
Zakra is one of the most popular WordPress portfolio themes. It’s professional and easy to customize. Using it, you’ll have a site in a few hours.
Features of Zakra:
- The Header has 3 areas you can customize: Header Top Bar, Header Main Area and Header Button. The Top Bar serves for different announcements, such as limited-time discounts and offers; you can activate it or leave it inactive. The Header Main Area refers to what displays on the screen. You can change its layout, enable/disable a search icon, choose a border bottom (dimensions and color), etc. The Header button refers to the main CTA in the homepage. You can type the text you want to appear on the button, and place a link on the respective button.
- The theme has options for posts/pages/blog. The options are separated into General options, settings for Blog/Archive, settings for single posts and options for Meta data. One strength of this theme is that it has plenty of layouts to choose from, for every type of page: default pages/blog/archive/single posts and pages.
- For the styling options, Zakra has multiple settings regarding base colors, link colors and buttons.
Portfolio Press is one of the best WordPress portfolio themes. It’s adequate for creative professionals, in areas such as photography, web design, art, etc.
Theme features:
- It has the regular options for defining a site identity: site title, tagline and site icon. The logo, favicon and apple touch icon can be uploaded directly in Customizer.
- The theme has special options for the Archive: full width archives. You can enable to display image and gallery formats on posts page, and you can activate the option to show archive titles.
- You can adjust the appearance of the homepage directly in Customizer: you can show latest posts or a static page.
This theme is perfectly suited for vibrant artist websites: musicians, DJs, producers, and other creative minds.
Features of Dhimay:
- Highly customizable,
- Event section,
- Music focused sections,
- Responsive design,
- Enable and disable individual components to make your page loading faster and smoother.
Pixgraphy is a good fit for artists’ and photographers’ portfolios. The cards layout adapts well to image galleries that impress users.
Features of the Pixgraphy theme:
- The theme has specific options regarding the layout: you can turn on the responsive layout, as well as animation options. You should benefit from the photography layout, but there are additional layout options, as well. You can choose between full width layout and boxed layout, etc.
- A series of distinct features of the theme includes: enable/disable search form, enable/disable sticky menu, enable/disable Go To Top, disable top social icons, display page featured image.
- There are fields you’ll fill in with links to social media accounts, in the Social Icons category of the menu in Customizer.
Gridsby is a theme for photographers’ portfolios. It has a Pinterest style gallery where you can replace the images with your own.
Features of Gridsby:
- Gridsby impresses through a wide range of customization options, from homepage settings, site identity and logo, to Google Fonts, Colors and Blog Layout, etc.
- Among particularities of this theme, we mention: photo post method – which results in animated lightbox for displaying photos, or photos with direct link to post. Gallery page pagination is useful for a Pinterest style gallery you choose to show on the website. Thus, you choose the number of photos to display with the pagination option in the gallery pages.
- The theme has specific settings for category pages in the website, which makes it easier to properly structure the site.
Emmet Lite is a perfect theme for professional-looking corporate portfolio websites. It has a clean design and is simple to customize.
Features of Emmet Lite:
- The theme has plenty of features and options that allow for easy customization of a website. Among them, basic settings are ensured for the identity of the website: logo plus title, tagline and site icon, upload image for the Header, set up the website color scheme with Header/Background/Text/Accent color, etc.
- You have a special feature for the Big Title Section, where you can also include Calls-to-action.
- There are special settings for the First Feature Section, which helps you bring forward your unique value proposition.
- You can further customize the Second Feature Section, the Accent Section and the Subscribe Section.
ePortfolio is one of the ideal WordPress portfolio themes for graphic designers, photographers, web designers, professional bloggers, video producers.
Features of ePortfolio:
- There’s a specific section for layout management: you can select the global page/post sidebar layout, and you can also select the time span format.
- The layout options include a variety of styles for each of the following: latest posts/blog page, portfolio page template, photography page template.
- For a website where you’ll include plenty of photos, it’ll be useful to customize pagination.
- You can take into consideration the activation of a preloader.
- The theme is SEO-optimized, so you have an extra chance to get visibility in search engines and catch users’ attention.
Perfect Portfolio might be the perfect choice of portfolio theme. It can make your website stand out of the crowd. You’ll get a remarkable presentation in no time.
Features of Perfect Portfolio:
- The General Settings include a subsection related to SEO. So, you can make the website SEO-friendly. Additionally, the theme is Schema friendly, and comes with Speed Optimized code.
- The General Settings also include options to enable blog excerpts, set up the excerpt length, enable showing popular posts, etc.
- There’s a category dedicated to customizations of the site appearance: choose the site typography, select the background imaged, choose the background color.
Online Portfolio is a theme for building professional portfolio websites, in different areas. It has plenty of features you can use to customize your site to the minutest detail.
Features of Online Portfolio:
- This theme has the option to include a homepage Slider. Further customization options are available under this category in the Customizer menu. You can add CTA buttons in slides.
- Extensive options are available for the website layout. You can adjust settings for the default sidebar, feature image for single post/page, blog/archive.
- The specific theme options have various settings for the color scheme: both color options and color reset options give a plus of flexibility to the theme. In case you want to change the website appearance, you can use the reset options and align the design with the new branding guidelines.
Snow is a WordPress theme that breathes minimalism.
This theme will suite for designers, photographers, web agencies and studios, freelancers and so on.
Features of Snow:
- Beautiful portfolio layouts,
- 18+ portfolio styles,
- Custom options for single Page, Posts and Works,
- Lots of gallery options,
- Responsive and retina ready,
- Smooth Parallax for Images and Video (you can turn-off or customize them)
- Typography control,
- 3 Navigation Types – top menu, side menu and full-screen menu.
We recommend Elegant Portfolio for those who want to create a clean and minimalist portfolio website, using a lot of white space. This theme has all the needed options for you to customize the site and give it your personal touch.
Features of Elegant Portfolio:
- One of the most important category in the Customizer menu is that of Appearance Settings. Here, you can select the typography (Primary Font and Secondary Font), upload a background image and select a color for the pages background.
- There’s a special category dedicated to layout settings: you’ll set up the blog layout and the general sidebar layout.
- The General Settings include some SEO customizations, which means increased chances your website will be visible in Google results pages.
The Laurits WordPress portfolio theme provides minimalistic design and an elegant presentation for websites. It is suitable for photographers, illustrators, freelancers, web designers, etc.
Features of Laurits:
- WooCommerce-ready,
- 12 predesigned homepages,
- Multiple customizable layouts for portfolio lists,
- Portfolio List Gallery layout,
- Portfolio List Masonry layout,
- Portfolio List Slider layout,
- Portfolio List Justified Gallery layout,
- 3 pagination types for portfolio lists,
- Fullscreen Portfolio Slider shortcode,
- Interactive Portfolio Showcase shortcode,
- Highly customizable typography settings,
- Separate typography settings for responsive,
- 1000+ Google Fonts.
Oráiste is a portfolio WordPress theme that breaths freshness. It is perfect for creative professionals such as: photographers, illustrators, graphic designers, etc.
Features of Oráiste:
- Light and dark creative design templates for showcasing projects,
- 12 predesigned homepages,
- Multiple customizable layouts for portfolio lists,
- Portfolio List Gallery layout,
- Portfolio List Masonry layout,
- Portfolio List Slider layout,
- Portfolio List Justified Gallery layout,
- 3 pagination types for portfolio lists,
- WooCommerce-ready,
- Multiple Header behaviors,
- Variable grid size,
- Highly customizable typography settings,
- Separate typography settings for responsive,
- 1000+ Google Fonts.
Eldon is a modern, engaging, and visually rich portfolio theme that is best suited for artists and other creative minds. Is uses gorgeous imagery, and the good news is that the images can be kept for free when the theme is bought.
Features of Eldon:
- Easy-to-Use Powerful Admin Interface,
- One-click import of demo site,
- 10 predesigned homepages,
- Practical inner pages,
- Multiple customizable layouts for portfolio single items,
- Custom Portfolio single layouts,
- Portfolio Gallery – big and small layouts,
- Portfolio Images – big and small layouts,
- Multiple Header behaviors,
- and many more.
16. RT Portfolio
RT Portfolio is a beautiful and clean WordPress portfolio theme. It has all the needed features to create a stunning website, without being cluttered.
Features of RT Portfolio:
- The theme focuses on the customization of the front page, which is the most important page for this niche. There are plenty of options for the front-page design: specific settings for each needed section (About, Services, Portfolio, Testimonial, Team sections).
- You have the basic options to create the site identity, as well as settings for a banner in the front-page.
- The theme options are clearly organized as: Header options, General options and Footer options.
The Multipurpose Portfolio theme is suitable for portfolio websites related to any niche. It has a trendy design that’s easy to customize.
Features of Multipurpose Portfolio:
- The specific theme settings refer to: changing the default typography for headlines, body text and tags, choosing the website colors, customizing the top bar, adding links to social media accounts in the banner section, choosing the layout and text alignment for the footer, etc.
- The site identity options couldn’t have missed from the Customizer. They help you give personality to the website, using a certain logo, title and tagline, and a distinct site icon.
- You can upload a certain image for the website Header, and make the homepage more relevant, more expressive.
- The theme comes with various demos you can use as a starting point for your website.
The Mogi portfolio theme is an innovative WordPress Theme, crafted by creative people for creative People.
Features of the Mogi portfolio theme:
- Extremely customizable,
- One-click demo import,
- You can combine different demos as you like,
- Beautiful and smooth animations to make your site stand out from the crowd,
- Full typography control,
- Great performance.
Gracey is an avant-garde WordPress portfolio theme, made for daring minds.
Features of the Gracey portfolio theme:
- Versatile portfolios,
- Predesign product pages,
- WooCommerce compatibility,
- One-click demo import,
- Easy-to-Use powerful admin interface,
- 10 predesigned homepages,
- Multiple customizable layouts for portfolio lists,
- Portfolio List Gallery layout,
- Portfolio List Masonry layout,
- Portfolio List Slider layout,
- Portfolio List Justified Gallery layout
- Full typography control,
- and so many more.
And we’re done! 19 lovely WordPress portfolio themes that you can choose from.
What’s next now?
Well, it’s time to roll over your sleeves and start designing that portfolio website.
Here‘s some know-how that you might need.
Important: because the WordPress experience has changed recently, I would advise to go with block-based themes and a versatile builder such as Kubio. Because blocks are the future of WordPress.
Now, if you liked this article, and you want to learn more about how to design a WordPress website, make sure to subscribe to our Youtube channel and follow us on Twitter and Facebook!
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Alina is a digital marketer with a passion for web design. When she's not strategizing she's doing photography, listening to podcasts on history and psychology, and playing with her 2 dogs and cat.
