Aside from being a Designer and Digital Strategist, I’ve been a beauty and lifestyle blogger for a number of years now. And I can say, one of the major things is always finding stunning yet effective themes. Today I’ve rounded up a few themes that I’d love to share with you. Personally when I’m looking for WP themes that would suit my lifestyle and beauty blogging needs, I find that I want something that offers the following:
- Clean Layout
- Gallery
- Ability to add Advertisements if needed
- Feature packed (maybe offers recipe style posts, or review custom post types, or has exclusive post and page layouts)
- Is WooCommerce ready or can add that functionality
- Magazine style
Over the years I found that those features work awesome for beauty bloggers, and besides it’s what they seek most. If you’re a beauty or lifestyle blogger, feel free to chime in below about what you look for in your theme.
This is a more fun, yet clean and streamlined theme. It’s ideal for the blogger who’s just getting started. It doesn’t offer a Magazine-esque style site, but it’s very well laid out based upon a Grid. Also, it seems as though the theme author has made it super easy to customize the colors and fonts as needed, as well as uploading your own header image. This theme is a child theme based upon the Genesis Framework, which you must purchase separately.
Another cool feature I like about this theme is that it offers a really nicely customized Blockquote style and as well gives you a Landing page template (perfect for your lead capture) and has tons of widget areas in post and is fully responsive.
The Isabelle theme is another truly feminine theme. It screams simple sophistication, a vibe often found through beauty blogs and lifestyle blogs. This is another theme perfect for the blogger who’s just getting started, or that wants to keep it super simple. I really love that this theme includes a Subscription widget, and social media follow buttons already, great to instantly build your list and social channels. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem as though it’s WooCommerce ready, but you may be able to add other commerce options like Paypal buttons or use another cart.
Audrey WordPress theme by Minted Pixels, is a clean more magazine-style blog theme. It’s the perfect bridge for those ready to venture into non-traditional content/sidebar layouts and explore what else there is. What I love about this theme is that the home page features a nice large slider, perfect for when you want to emphasize your special or featured posts. Also, it boasts a neat Instagram Widget at the bottom, which is awesome for sharing your latest “grams” with everyone and build interest. It also offers a subscription widget and easy social follow buttons, and as a Landing page template that is great for your lead-capture or sharing a special thing (think, webinar pages, one time only offers, targeted pages about a particular program you have going on).
Right of the bat, this theme is going to be perfect for the blogger who is ready to start selling digital goods (or physical ones too). The Milk Genesis child theme comes WooCommerce ready. This is a really clean and straightforward theme, and I imagine customizing it to meet your every need shouldn’t be a problem. On the homepage, you have the ability to have a large featured slider, there’s even a really neat email subscription box, perfect for directing readers to your list. You can additionally feature your products on the front page as well as select blog posts. Based on the demo, it’s not readily apparent if the theme comes with a fullwidth landing page style, but that would definitely make this theme perfect!
A very versatile and stylish theme jam-packed with features including: custom favicon and site logo, 3 different blog layouts, custom instagram widgets, sticky navigation, a full-width page amongst many others. I really love that it offers a wide range of styles to choose from. This is great for the days you want your posts to be completely different or look a specific way.
Hailey is a truly beautiful feminine theme. It boasts commerce features, responsive sliders, landing page templates, footer widgets, ability to customize the background and header to your liking, mail chimp newsletter ready, completely responsive, and has various color schemes already by default. The theme is yet another child theme of the Genesis Framework, and it also comes with it bundled up!
If you’re a blogger who wants your site to feel more like a website that has a blog attached to it, this theme can give that vibe. The homepage layout is great for presenting your programs, webinars and other must-share content, and since the theme comes with WooCommerce support, it makes it super easy to sell all your digital and physical goods. I also noticed the theme offers post navigation, making it easy to read other posts.
The Newspaper Magazine Style Theme
This is by far one of my favorite themes, in fact I do use it currently on my existing blog. What I love about it, it’s feature rich! Like seriously! Galleries, plenty of customized post layouts, ability to do custom pages, lots of widgets and it’s fully mobile responsive. The theme authors are also very helpful if you ever run into any issues, and they are always open to suggestions about improving the theme.
One thing I love about this, is it’s really truly completely customizable. You can create custom verbiage for just about everything using the “translations” feature, you can make the theme look like a custom built site if you know a wee bit of code. For example, take a look at YouBeauty (a fab lifestyle website), this site uses a newspaper layout, but with some custom tweaking, and totally stands out from the crowd.
What’s your favorite WordPress theme for blogging?
Chime in below and let me know, what themes are you loving and why. Tweet us on @thehungryjpeg and share your theme faves. Have a great one!
