Hello, artist! You want to have a website of your own to showcase and sell your art online? You are in the right place, my friend! I’ve created my own artist website using WordPress, and I can assure you that WordPress is definitely a good choice for creatives. In this post, I review the 15 best WordPress themes for artist websites to help you choose the best theme for your art portfolio and web shop, in case you’re planning to sell your art as well.
Let me take a wild guess: you are an artist toying with the idea of creating your own WordPress site?
You are in the right place, my dear! I’m a digital artist and photographer myself, and I’ve built this entire website on WordPress.
→ How To Make An Artist Website [Everything I Did To Create This Website!]
That being said, you can be sure I know what I’m talking about. (◕ᴗ◕)
In this post, I’m reviewing the 15 best WordPress themes for artist websites, aiming to provide you with valid, detailed information to help you pick the right theme for your specific needs.
Here’s what you’ll get in this post:
Is WordPress a good website for artists?
You surely know that there are plenty of website builders available online. WordPress is just one among many. There’s Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Shopify, and many more.
Now, how do you know that WordPress is good for your artist website?
In my opinion, here’s why you should consider creating your artist website with WordPress:
- WordPress is extremely flexible, giving you the most creative freedom to design your unique artist website. (The themes below will help you achieve that.)
- WordPress offers free e-commerce integration, allowing you to sell your art through your own WordPress store using WooCommerce (→ WooCommerce For Artists: Ultimate Guide To Selling Art On WordPress).
- WordPress comes with a user-friendly interface that allows you to build a website without any coding skills or previous experience in web design. WordPress’s native Gutenberg editor offers all the basic design elements you need. For more design options, you can install a free plugin like Elementor or Beaver Builder.
- Your WordPress site belongs fully to you and you have full control over it. When you create a website on Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, etc., your site practically belongs to that company and you are bound by their (changing) terms and conditions.
- WordPress is the most cost-effective way to build your own website. The software is open-source and completely free. You’ll only need to pay for web hosting and a domain name, which you can get for a couple of dollars per month, e.g. from Hostinger or Bluehost. (More hosting choices: Best Web Hosting For Artists With WordPress Sites In 2024)
If you need help creating your own WordPress site, read my post on How To Make An Artist Website With WordPress In 5 EASY Steps.
- Stay in touch!
Our Newsletter is packed with creative tips, free tutorials, art tool reviews, and looaads of inspiration!
How to select the best WordPress theme for your artist website?
While you can basically choose any WordPress theme that you find appealing, there are a few things you should pay attention to.
To ensure your site looks good on all devices, meets search engine ranking criteria, and provides your visitors with a pleasant user experience, it’s key that the WordPress theme has the following features:
Responsiveness
A lot of people use their mobile phone or tablet to surf the web. Responsive design makes sure that your artist website looks good on both desktop computers and mobile devices. Plus, usability is also an SEO benefit because Google and other search engines monitor website responsiveness and accessibility.
Portfolio & E-Commerce Features
The main purpose of your artist website will be to showcase and sell your art, I assume. Therefore, you should make sure that the WordPress theme already has a pre-designed portfolio page. It will just save you the time of creating it yourself.
Nevertheless, it’s not a big thing to create your own portfolio gallery. Here’s how you can do it: 3 Easy Ways To Create A Portfolio Gallery In WordPress.
I mentioned above that WordPress as such is e-commerce capable. However, if your WordPress theme lacks e-commerce functionality, you cannot add it. You’ll have to change the theme once you decide to open your own store.
To avoid the hassle of switching themes, I suggest selecting a WordPress theme for your artist website that features e-commerce capability right from the start. Even if you don’t need it at the beginning.
SEO Optimization
SEO stands for search engine optimization and evidently helps you rank your website in the search results. An SEO-optimized WordPress theme includes clean code, loads fast, and supports schema markup and optimized meta tags, making it easy for search engines to crawl and index the site.
Here are some more tips for you to get your artist website’s SEO on point:
Speaking of getting your website seen, I have an entire guide for you to build an artist website for success that shows you everything from setting up your WordPress site, creating an online store, growing a mailing list, to starting an art blog—with a huge chapter on SEO and driving free, organic traffic.
You can find out more about the e-guide here:
15 Best WordPress Themes For Artist Websites
For my roundup of the fifteen best WordPress themes for artist websites, I’ve only selected high-quality themes created by the market-leading development companies.
All themes on the list are multi-purpose, fully responsive themes that are SEO-optimized and e-commerce ready. They all belong to the bestsellers in the market, meaning you cannot go wrong choosing any of these WordPress themes!
That being said, you can totally base your choice on what you like best. Just click on the “View Demo” button below each theme to preview the live version and pick the theme that you find the most appealing. ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
Luckily, there are lots of ready-made WordPress templates that you can install with one click. That means you don’t need to spend much time on design and layout. Plus, templates help you maintain a consistent look and feel across your artist website.
All you need to do is fill the theme with your own content, and you have your artist website ready in no time.
Sounds good? Let’s get into it!
OceanWP
OceanWP is a top-class multi-purpose WordPress theme with millions of downloads and stellar ratings on WordPress.org. I’m using OceanWP for my own artist website and I’m super-happy with it.
The theme is easy to customize and provides you with countless options to design your artist website. Itʼs SEO-optimized, fully responsive, and WooCommerce ready. It works with most of the popular page builders like Elementor, Beaver Buider, and WPBakery.
OceanWP has lots of ready-made demos that you can install with one click. Those demos come with all the essentials you need for your artist website: portfolio page, about & contact page, shop, blog, and more. There’s even an OceanWP portfolio extension available that lets you create a beautiful gallery to present your artwork.
(Just in case you want to know: I’ve created my website from scratch, without using any template. You can do that too, but it’s much more work than importing one of the templates below.)
If you want to learn more about this theme, read my detailed OceanWP WordPress Theme Review For Artists.
1. Photo
Photo, as its name suggests, is a WordPress theme particularly tailored to photographers. However, it’s a great pick for any visual creative.
With one click of the mouse, you can install this OceanWP template and build your website in under an hour—as the company itself points out.
The OceanWP Photo template is beginner-friendly, comes with multiple desktop and mobile header styles, as well as a customizable top bar with social menu. All important pages are already in place, including a blog with sample post pages that you can customize to your needs.
A free WooCommerce shop and product pages are integrated, even though the shop page isn’t linked in the header menu yet. However, that’s something you can fix with one click if you want to have your own art shop.
2. Paint
Paint is a fantastic WordPress theme for your artist website, regardless of whether you’re a painter, photographer, designer, illustrator, or other digital artist.
Paint was explicitly designed to showcase your art portfolio. You’ll get a ready-made, fully-featured gallery section where you can add photos of your work. When a visitor clicks on one of the images, the gallery expands into a full-width slider that lets your audience scroll through all of your works in full size.
This WordPress theme is also an excellent choice if you want to start an art blog. It has everything art bloggers need: pre-designed blog templates with recent post widget, newsletter opt-in, and social sharing options.
For more insights into why and how an artist should start a blog, check out my posts below:
3. Jacob
Jacob, as opposed to the previous two WordPress themes, was not specifically made with artists in mind. However, it’s still one of the best WordPress themes for artist websites, because it comes with everything to present your art and yourself as the artist online.
The first thing you’ll notice is the big hero image at the top of the home page where you can place your favorite artwork. The template has a beautiful portfolio section with a filterable gallery. There’s also a premade blog section, making it an ideal template for art bloggers.
The Jacob WordPress template comes with a dark background on the home page. If you don’t like the colors, you can simply adjust them to your taste; all other features are easily customizable as well.
4. Minimal
Minimal is another contender for best WordPress themes for artist websites. True to its name, the theme has a minimalist, clean, and functional design.
The moment visitors enter the site, they immediately get an idea of what you as the artist and your art is about. On the left sidebar, which remains visible all the time, you can upload a photo of yourself and shortly say who you are.
The buttons below your photo lead your visitors directly to a contact form, your portfolio, art blog, and social media pages. For most artists, that’s all they need for a start.
As you gain exposure as an artist, you can add more features, like an online shop and search bar, or choose a different header and footer style.
Astra
Astra is a market-leading WordPress theme with over a million active users. Itʼs fast-loading and very easy to use. In fact, Astra prides itself on having the “most lightweight theme available in the market that offers unmatched performance.” I don’t have any objections. (>ᴗ<)
Just like OceanWP, Astra works with all major WordPress plugins and page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, Divi, etc.
→ Elementor For Photographers And Artists – QUICK & EASY Page Builder
The theme comes with clean code, is SEO-optimized, and allows you to customize everything down to the T—without needing any coding knowledge.
Astra offers a wide selection of ready-to-use templates, and here are the best ones for your artist website!
5. Painter Artist
Astra’s Painter Artist is a perfect WordPress theme to showcase, promote, and sell your work. Apart from an about and portfolio page, there’s a specific section for your upcoming exhibitions.
The home page welcomes your visitors with a large hero image of your best work that you can accompany with the story behind the piece, along with your artist name and creative style.
WooCommerce is integrated and the ready-made shop page already features a number of sample products that you can customize to your needs. The theme’s design is clean and distraction-free, making the navigation through your art website easy and straightforward.
6. Artist
Artist is another of Astra’s WordPress templates specifically made for visual creatives. It’s perfect for starters, because it provides you with everything you need at the beginning of your website launch, without overwhelming you with unnecessary frills.
Home page, portfolio, about, and contact pages are waiting for you to be customized. The portfolio gallery sorts your artwork into different categories, already displaying a “Buy Now” button that will lead to your future store.
A pre-designed shop is not included with this template, but—as you know—all it takes is one click to install WooCommerce and you are ready to go!
→ Ultimate Guide To Selling Art On WordPress With WooCommerce For Artists
On the home page, you can show your best and most recent works, tell your artist story, and inform your visitors about upcoming exhibitions.
The about page provides enough space for your artist bio and statement, while people can look up your studio on Google maps on the contact page, get in touch with you, and follow your social media accounts.
7. Freelance Artist
Freelance Artist is one of the best WordPress themes for artist websites that lets you beautifully showcase and sell your work, while keeping everything simple and neat.
Don’t get fooled by the plain layout you see on the home page. You can change the gray-white background at two clicks of the mouse, if you prefer something more colorful. I rather suggest that you take a closer look at the website structure, because it’s absolutely well-done and functional.
Your art portfolio is at the same time your shop, nicely grouped into different categories. When clicking on an artwork, visitors are taken to the product page that provides them with more information about the work and showcases related works.
All in all, Freelance Artist is an excellent template to display and sell your art. It’s easy to customize and does a great job!
8. Photographer
Photographer is a professional-looking WordPress theme not only for photographers, but for all types of visual artists. The theme welcomes visitors with a sophisticated design on the home page, featuring compelling parallax effects and smart blocks of content.
There’s enough space to show your images and talk about your art and other offerings. The about, services and contact pages come with an equally appealing and functional grid design.
The pre-designed portfolio page provides ample space to display your artist logo or best artwork at the top, along with some lines of information. The rest of your portfolio is hosted in a tiled gallery that expands into a scrollable lightbox when the viewer clicks on one of the images.
Divi
Divi is the next runner-up on the list of best WordPress themes for artist websites. It’s developed by Elegant Themes—one of THE names for all things WordPress out there.
Just like all themes on the list, Divi lets you build any type of website without having to know how to code. It goes without saying that all themes are fully responsive, SEO-friendly, highly customizable, and ready to work straight out of the box.
Divi requires a yearly license fee that is affordable and gives you access to the developer’s whole product range. One thing you need to know is that Divi doesn’t work with WordPress’s native Gutenberg editor. Instead, it comes with its own editor (also called Divi), which is included in the plan. However, you can also use a different page builder, such as Elementor or Beaver Builder.
One thing that all Divi templates have in common is that shop and blog pages themselves are ready-made. Unfortunately, there are no individual pre-designed product sales and post page templates. But that’s not a huge problem. If you don’t want to design your own blog post and product pages, you can simply import some of Divi’s single page designs.
In fact, there are 1,900+ single page designs to choose from. Apart from that, Divi offers 260 full website design packs and I’ve sorted out the best ones for your artist website!
9. Fashion
Fashion was originally made for fashion designers. It is absolutely beautiful and has everything you need for an artist website: home page, landing page, about, contact, gallery, shop and blog page. What else do you desire?
The home page allows you to display a huge hero image of your artwork, along with the title and the story behind it. Right below, you can display the most popular products from your online shop. When a potential client clicks on an image, you can send them directly to the sales page.
The gallery page seems to be a bit too simple, to my taste. It shows your works in a tiled gallery that allows the viewer to see every piece in full size at a click of the mouse. However, there’s no lightbox capability, no social sharing options, no image titles, etc. However, if you like the template as such, you can easily create your own, more sophisticated, portfolio gallery.
10. Photography Studio
Photography Studio is a great WordPress template for photographers and other artists—in particular those who also want to sell services and present entire projects, instead of single images.
For those purposes, the Photography Studio template features a project page, besides the regular portfolio gallery. Plus, it has two premade service sections where you can present any art-related services you offer. This can be photography, editing, retouching, creative direction, art commissions, or even online courses.
There’s an eye-catching contact form in the footer, so clients can directly get in touch with you. Just like all other Divi templates, Photography Studio is ecommerce-ready. However, WooCommerce is not pre-installed.
11. Art Gallery
Art Gallery is a versatile WordPress template for a variety of artist websites. It has a bright and minimalist design and can be customized to fit any artist brand.
The about section offers enough space for your artist statement, your skillset, and your best works. There’s even a special artist page, where you can post your bio, show more pieces you created, and even include a video about your work.
Art Gallery is especially adequate for artists who run exhibitions or have other announcements to make on their website. The template comes with two premade sections that you can use to speak about such events—or simply repurpose to display your work.
Neve
Neve is a popular multi-purpose WordPress theme with more than 300K active users. It’s perfect for small businesses (→ How To Start An Art Business), agencies, bloggers, e-commerce shops with WooCommerce storefront, and personal portfolio sites.
The theme is lightweight, SEO-optimized, and has a minimalist design, making it load in mere seconds and helping you achieve top rankings in Google search results.
Neve is fully responsive and makes your artist website look good on any viewing device. It’s easily customizable and works seamlessly with the Gutenberg block editor and the most popular page builders (Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin, Divi).
Neve, created by Theme Isle, comes with 100+ starter sites ready to import. At the moment, they offer more than a dozen of templates suitable for creatives. The following two templates, in my opinion, definitely belong to the best WordPress themes for artist websites.
12. Photography
Photography is Neve’s WordPress theme geared towards photographers and other visual creatives. The theme comes with everything you need to get started with your artist website. It has a beautiful and purpose-driven home page to display your best works.
Of course, you’ll also get a premade about and contact page with contact form and Google maps integration. A big plus of this theme is that you get two ready-made portfolio pages to add your own works and say a couple of words about them.
Photography is also a great theme for art bloggers. Both blog page and post templates are included and just need to be filled with your own content.
A nice thing about this theme is that it contains a placeholder for your artist logo in both top and footer menu. All you need to do is replace it with your unique logo and your website is completely in line with your artist brand. Colors, fonts, and everything else can be customized at a couple of clicks, too.
13. Jewellery Shop
Jewellery Shop is my second recommendation from Neve’s best WordPress themes for artist websites. As the name suggests, the template is an ideal fit for artists wanting to sell their work. It allows you to display your creations just beautifully—on the home page and on the shop and product pages.
On each product page, you can show potential customers your art prints from multiple angles in an image carousel, which helps them make their purchase decision.
→ How To Display Art Prints For Sale Online [*6 Tips That Work*]
The pre-designed about page is perfect to introduce yourself as the artist and, for example, show a video of yourself working in your studio. There’s space for your artist bio and statement, as well as your best artworks. The news page can be easily repurposed into an art blog; it comes ready-made with a featured post grid and single blog post templates.
Since the Jewellery Shop template is intended to sell products, it doesn’t come with a dedicated portfolio page. You can either use the shop page to display your portfolio or simply create your own gallery, e.g. with the native Gutenberg editor or a page builder. The options are many, because you can use any of the popular gallery widgets with Neve’s WordPress themes!
Breakthrough Pro
Breakthrough Pro is a minimal WordPress theme by StudioPress with a sleek design and modern layout. The theme uses lots of white space with some bold colors to catch the eye of the viewer, without being overwhelming.
Navigating your artist website remains straightforward, enabling visitors to get to all of the important links and view your products and services with no more than one click.
Breakthrough Pro is fast loading, fully responsive and SEO-friendly. It is eCommerce-ready and can be used with the native Gutenberg WordPress editor and any other of the popular page builders.
As opposed the other WordPress themes on the list, Breakthrough Pro works with the Genesis Framework. That framework is a centralized platform that hosts all the features and functions offered by WordPress. You can be sure that your website is secure at all times, updated regularly, and has access to the latest tools and design widgets.
The Genesis Framework comes with a one-time payment of around US$60 that lets you use the theme for an unlimited number of websites, along with unlimited updates and premium support for a year. There’s a 60-day money back guarantee, in case you’re not happy with what you get.
To help you avoid any potential unhappiness right from the start, I’ve sorted out two templates that are a fantastic fit for your artist website.
14. Essence Pro
Essence Pro is a fully-featured and lovely designed WordPress theme for your artist website. The home page lets you flaunt your best artwork right at the top, with a nice text overlay to add the title and some quick words about the image. Two buttons encourage visitors to click through to your store or get more information.
You get premade page layouts for basically everything: contact page, author page, landing pages, pricing tables, and even blog and shop pages. Contrary to Divi’s themes, single post templates and product pages are included in the package. With WooCommerce being pre-installed, the shop is ready to work out of the box.
The only thing that’s missing is a dedicated portfolio page. To solve the problem, you can simply download Genesis’ free custom blocks that also include a gallery widget!
15. Revolution Pro
Revolution Pro is another favorite of mine for best WordPress themes for artist websites from StudioPress’s templates. The template lets you showcase a huge image of your art at top of the home page. You can add the title of the work and a short blurb about it. The call to action invites visitors to learn more or go directly to the sales page.
Just like with StudioPress’s previous theme I spoke about above, Revolution Pro has everything ready-made, including a fully functional shop and art blog, with single product and post templates. On top of that, the Revolution Pro template comes with a dozen of sample pages you can use for your about page, artist bio, service offer, and others.
Unfortunately, there’s one drawback: just like with the previous template, you won’t get a premade portfolio section. To make up for that, you can either adapt one of the included sample pages or simply create your own!
