How to choose a WordPress theme (9 crucial factors to consider)

Wondering how to choose a WordPress theme?
Picking a WordPress theme can be tricky. There are tons of options with similar layouts and seemingly identical features. And unless you’re a WordPress expert, chances are, you’re not even sure what to look for in a theme.
Don’t worry, this guide is here to help.
Here, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about how to choose a WordPress theme for your website.
We’ll kick off with an overview of the importance of picking the right theme and share essential criteria to evaluate themes. To wrap up, we’ll explore the best places to find great WordPress themes and our top picks to help you create a beautiful, fast-loading, performance-optimized website.
Let’s dive in.
TL;DR – In a hurry and can’t wait to get started with a stellar theme? Check out our top recommendations: Ona (a multi-purpose block theme suitable for various use cases), Sedona Shop (for eCommerce sites), and Xhibiter (for selling digital products), all backed by a 14-day no questions asked money-back guarantee. Otherwise, read on for an in-depth guide on how to choose a WordPress theme.
Why is choosing the right WordPress theme important?
When you create your WordPress site, your theme is one of the first things you’ll have to set up. There are lots of things to evaluate when considering how to choose a WordPress theme, so it’s crucial to pick the right one from the get-go.
Although you can change your theme later on, it is better to make a good initial choice rather than face the hassle of replacing it after you’ve invested time and effort customizing it on your local development environment.
Your theme is the foundation of your website. On the backend; it supplies the template files, images, stylesheets, and codebase that controls how your website functions. It’s equally important on the front end, it dictates the visual aspects of your site — colors, fonts, design elements, and the overall layout.
Choosing the right WordPress theme is crucial because it directly impacts your website’s performance, user experience, and overall success. A well-designed theme ensures your site loads quickly, which is essential because slow websites can drive visitors away and hurt your search engine rankings.
How to choose a WordPress theme: 9 key considerations
Here are the most important criteria to think through when deciding on a WordPress theme for your website.
1. Built-in functionality
While you can add extra functionality using plugins, it’s best to start off with a theme that has the core functionality for your specific use case. This ensures that your chosen theme matches the overall purpose of your website.
For example, if you’re building an online store, you might prioritize a theme that offers deep WooCommerce integrations and e-commerce-specific features like robust product filters, advanced product recommendations, product detail pages, product quick view, optimized checkout flows, trust badges, etc. to enable you to deliver a great shopping experience. Like this:

Whereas, if you want to create a website to host your portfolio, you might want a theme with various layout options, slides to showcase your work, and a custom post type that lets you easily add detailed descriptions and media to provide extra context about key projects.
If you’re not sure which features you want, a tip is to bookmark sites that are similar to what you want to create and note the key features you’d like to replicate. Then, put together a list of the top features that matter to you, rearrange the list in the order of priority, and filter out the nice-to-haves.
A word of caution: Stick to only the essential features that are important to you. As a rule, the more features a theme has, the slower it’ll make your site.
2. Core design
Once you’ve confirmed the key features you expect your theme to have, the next step is to choose a design that you’re happy with. As before, you can bookmark designs that you like to create a swipe file for inspiration.
When evaluating a theme’s design, focus on each page’s template, key elements like headers and menus, and its use of whitespace. Don’t worry about components like colors and fonts, as they can be easily customized.
For instance, if you’re going for a modern and elegant vibe, search for a minimalist theme that provides ample white space, clean lines, and has an uncluttered single-column layout, like this:

Whereas, if your brand is quirky, fun, or unconventional, a design that offers an asymmetrical layout, unique typefaces, and bold, contrasting colors might be more suitable.
Ignore themes with overly intricate designs as they can make your site look cluttered and difficult to navigate. Opt for a simple canvas that closely resembles the finished look you want your site to have.
3. Responsiveness
Nowadays, the majority of themes are responsive out of the box. They automatically adapt to the screen size of each web visitor.
But while most themes are responsive, not all themes render responsive designs properly; certain elements may appear wonky on smaller screens.
How responsive your theme is matters because more than 50% of web visitors access websites via mobile devices. If their experience on your site is poor, they’ll likely never return.
There’s another reason why responsiveness is a crucial factor to consider when thinking about how to choose a WordPress theme. Since 2019, Google has been indexing and ranking websites based on how they work on mobile devices. If your site’s mobile version isn’t up to snuff, it won’t rank well on the SERPs.
Thankfully, it’s easy to test a theme’s responsiveness before installing it on your WordPress site. Simply truncate your browser window and notice how the theme adjusts. Alternatively, you can try out its demo on mobile or tablet devices.
Finally, once the theme is active on your site, you can enter its URL into Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to gauge how well it performs on mobile devices.
4. Performance
Web performance is an important factor to consider when thinking about how to choose a WordPress theme.
Websites that load slowly tend to have high bounce rates, aka people who leave without interacting with their content or visiting other pages. This makes sense; people are impatient. No one wants to wait too long to access a website.

But this doesn’t mean that you should pick the absolute fastest theme based on pure numbers alone. During our search for the fastest WordPress theme, we found that starter themes load the quickest. However, they lack most of the essential features and are barely functional on their own. You must pair them with page builders like Elementor or Beaver Builder or use multiple plugins just to add basic features, all of which can significantly slow down your site.
As a rule, when contemplating how to choose a WordPress theme, steer clear from themes with fancy features and animations. While those look eye-catching, they’re proven to be bad for the user experience and cause slow load times because their HTML and CSS scripts take longer to load.
Prioritize themes that are lightweight and have the key features you want already baked into them. (You can employ additional tactics such as using a speed optimization plugin to further speed up your site later on).
5. Budget
Price is another thing to consider when mulling over how to choose a WordPress theme. WordPress developers typically use these three pricing models: free, premium, and freemium.
- Free themes: All features are available at no cost.
- Premium themes: All features are available for a one-time or recurring fee.
- Freemium themes: Some features are available for free. You can upgrade to a premium plan to unlock advanced functionality or support.
If you’re on a low budget, it’s hard to beat the price of “free”, especially since there are tons of top-notch options to choose from. Just be careful to avoid themes with too few downloads, as they may be badly coded or worse, contain malicious code.
If you want advanced features, additional templates, and dedicated support, you might want to consider opting for a freemium or paid theme, provided your budget allows.
6. Customizability
It’s highly unlikely that your theme’s layout will precisely match what you have in mind. That’s why your chosen theme should offer extensive customization settings.
Typically, the level of customization options varies between free and premium themes. However, at a minimum, you should be able to effortlessly change the color scheme, typography, widgets, and layout.

It’s easy to find out how customizable a theme is. Check out its pre-made demo templates and replace the elements as you see fit.
7. Plugin compatibility
While WordPress provides the core platform for your site, plugins help you unlock the full potential of your website.
Plugins are apps that you can “plug into” your site to add extra, useful features. For instance, if you run a restaurant, you might need to accept online reservations. Or add a contact form so people can get in touch.
Choose a theme that’s fully compatible with the extra features you’d expect to add to your site via plugins, whether it’s social sharing, image galleries, advanced SEO, website analytics, or others.
To find out if your theme pairs well with the plugins you intend to install, scan its landing page or contact the developer directly.
8. Resources and support
Unless you’re an expert WordPress user, you’ll likely need some guidance with your theme. Make sure your chosen theme offers detailed documentation to instruct you on how to use it to its fullest.

Also, note how often your theme is updated. WordPress is constantly being refined — bug fixes, new features, security patches, performance upgrades, etc. To make sure everything works as it should, choose a theme that is tweaked regularly in line with the latest version of WordPress.
Lastly, observe the quality of support available from the theme developers. If you’re thinking of downloading a free theme, check how often its developers respond to users’ requests for help in the “Comments” section of the WordPress repository.
If you’re getting a premium theme, ensure that it includes developer support for at least the first six months (keep in mind that you may have to pay for developer support). This ensures that you’re adequately supported in the early days.
9. User reviews
Past and current users are the best sources to find out how well a theme actually is. Look for themes with plenty of active installs, four and five-star ratings, and positive user comments.
It’s easy to find this out, simply, head to the plugin’s landing page and locate the section for user testimonials.

Additionally, you can check out its ratings and run a quick online search to surface comments and feedback about it.
Where to get the best WordPress themes?
There you have it — that’s all you need to know about how to choose a WordPress theme!
Finding the right WordPress theme is one of the most important decisions you’ll need to make about your website. Hopefully, this guide has helped you identify the crucial factors to consider before taking the plunge and installing a theme on your website.
If you’re looking for where to find WordPress themes, you can’t go wrong with these places:
- WordPress.org theme directory: This contains over 12,000 free themes from various developers.
You can filter by key layout offered, available features, and subjects to choose the best theme for your needs. - DeoThemes.com:Hi🖐, that’s us! We’ve been offering high-quality WordPress themes and plugins since 2012, and have multiple free and paid themes for a wide range of use cases. Browse through all our themes here.
Or if you’re in a hurry, check out our top recommendations: Ona (a multi-purpose block theme suitable for various use cases), Sedona Shop (for eCommerce sites), and Xhibiter (for selling digital products), all backed by a 14-day no questions asked money-back guarantee.