12 best free Shopify themes and templates

Might sound paradoxical but the better the website design, the less visitors notice it. Why? Because they can navigate said website without having to think about it.

While creating intuitive design is not easy, Shopify has been leading the ranks as one of the most popular website builders with tons of pre-made templates that will get your business up and running. In fact, a lot of popular brands use some of the best Shopify themes for their online stores.

And the best part is, Shopify has multiple free and up to date themes you can use if you’re just starting out and don’t want to invest in expensive website hosting. Free Shopify themes offer all the core features and allows for flexible customization where you can edit or remove sections, buttons and other elements.

In this article, we review 12 best free Shopify themes, talk about how to choose one, and how we ended up with this particular list.

Top 12 free Shopify themes:

1. Dawn – best free Shopify theme
2. Origin – free Shopify theme for one-product stores
3. Publisher – free Shopify theme for independent studios
4. Ride – sports-centric Shopify theme design
5. Taste – free Shopify theme for food and drinks store
6. Craft – Shopify theme with neat and timeless design
7. Studio – free Shopify theme for artists
8. Sense – free Shopify theme for beauty products
9. Crave – bold Shopify theme for food products
10. Refresh – Shopify theme for men’s body care products
11. Voonex – free Shopify theme for events & conferences
12. Constance – free Shopify theme for skin care products

What to look for in a free Shopify theme?

Since the price is out of the question, what should you look for in a free Shopify theme? Here’s our criteria:

• Theme architecture version. All the themes on our list are updated to the latest version and work with the newest Shopify 2.0 features. Make sure the theme you’ve chosen is not Vintage because you’ll lose a lot of functionality and will have to invest in paid apps and plugins to fill in the gaps.
• Responsive design. The number of people that shop on their phones keeps increasing every year – and you don’t want to be left behind. Make sure to always check how the theme looks on a phone screen so your store visitors don’t leave the site out of frustration.
• Your business industry. Shopify themes that are better for big e-commerce stores might not suit your one-product business. Pay attention to the structure, elements, design, and features that the theme offers.
• User reviews. Always read user reviews and pay attention to the lower ratings to see what issues people are having and whether the creators addressed them.

Free Shopify themes: detailed overview

1. Dawn

Dawn is the free Shopify theme that you start out with when you create your Shopify account. And it’s certainly a great one. Dawn offers all the core features you need to successfully launch and manage your store. On top of it all, this theme is chic, stylish, and media-forward. Minimalist design removes all the clutter, so it’s easy to navigate.

Theme highlights:

• Media-forward product pages
• Advanced customization options
• Minimal and stylish

2. Origin

Origin is a free Shopify theme that’s designed for one-product stores. The design gives plenty of space to tell the brand story and talk about the product in a creative way. The original theme design is in a neutral color palette but you can tinker with it as much as you want because Origin offers flexible and advanced theme customization settings.

Theme highlights:

• Great for brand storytelling
• Advanced customization options
• Quick setup

3. Publisher

Publisher sways away from the usual Shopify theme design and offers a more unique look for your website. It’s a great theme for selling artwork, merchandise, books, and accessories. This free theme focuses on visual storytelling, bold design, and minimal navigation. The starting preset can inspire you to customize the theme to your liking as it also offers flexible customization options.

Theme highlights:

• Moody, progressive design
• Minimalist navigation
• Advanced customization options

4. Ride

Ride is a dark and bold Shopify theme that’s perfectly fit for selling sports equipment. This theme also offers unique page templates and asymmetrical layouts that allow you to create your own unique brand story. The theme is not cluttered but it gives enough space for editorial content and visual storytelling. And if you want to change things up, Ride has you covered with advanced customization options.

Theme highlights:

• Bold, dark design with accent colors
• Advanced customization options
• Innovative and flexible layout

5. Taste

Taste is one of the best Shopify themes for food and drink stores. It’s stylish, bold, and clean, with clear separate sections and no clutter. The product pages support larger product images, specialty product highlights, and FAQs, giving the potential buyer as much information on the product as possible. And if you wish to change up the sections and elements in this theme, you can do just that with flexible design and customization settings.

Theme highlights:

• Spacious and clean design
• Advanced customization options
• Thorough product pages

6. Craft

Craft is a refined and minimal Shopify theme that celebrates authentic design. This theme supports brand storytelling with dedicated space for rich and compelling narratives. Everything from the navigation bar to product pages is tidy and simple, making your product the center piece.

Theme highlights:

• Timeless, minimal design
• Advanced customization options
• Elevated storytelling

7. Studio

Studio is a great free theme and has several attributes that could help you to achieve your business goals. This theme combines modern typography, visual storytelling and minimalism to create an artistic look for your website.

As one of the great themes for artists, Studio supports collections-based navigation, creator filters, featured collections for galleries and new arrivals, as well as artist profiles. If you wish to tailor the theme to your brand, Studio has you covered, as it offers flexible customization options.

Theme highlights:

• Advanced customization options
• Collections-based navigation
• Stylish typography and colorful accents

8. Sense

Sense is a bright and fresh Shopify theme for beauty and skin-care products. The theme supports product videos, testimonials, and comprehensive product descriptions to build trust with the audience. If at any point you want to change elements, sections, navigation or anything else, you can easily do that because Sense offers advanced customization options that will help you achieve desired brand vision.

Theme highlights:

• Fresh and bright design
• Enhanced product understanding
• Advanced customization options

9. Crave

Crave is a vibrant Shopify theme perfectly fit for those that want to stand out among the rest. Vibrant, bold, and fun colors instantly bring personality into your brand. However, if you want to go for something a little bit different with your design, Crave allows you to do that with their advanced customization options.

Theme highlights:

• Vibrant and playful design
• Supports animated content
• Advanced customization options

10. Refresh

Refresh goes for a masculine, bold design with consistent typography and simple color palette. This free Shopify theme is great for emphasizing product quality and details with testimonials, ingredient information, and more. You can choose how you want the elements in your store to look with adaptive section layouts and advanced customization options.

Theme highlights:

• Modern design with minimalist color palette
• Focuses on product quality
• Advanced customization options

11. Voonex

Voonex is a free Shopify theme designed for various events, such as conferences, summits, concerts. This theme differs from the traditional e-commerce website layout, and offers such sections as event schedule, pricing plans, full event information, map integration, and more. The design is clean and minimal, focusing on the information rather than optics.

Theme highlights:

• Great for events & conferences
• Unique sections and layouts
• Minimal, uncluttered design

12. Constance

Constance is a Shopify theme that offers free and paid versions. The free version has all the core features you need, including a megamenu and a framework which creates a fully responsive website allowing it to look polished on all different screens. The theme also supports adding products to the wishlist without logging in.

Theme highlights:

• Beautiful design
• Clear navigation
• Professional megamenu

How did we rank the free Shopify themes?

While building a list of the best free Shopify themes, we have to consider several aspects such as:

• Responsive design. All the themes on this list have responsive design, meaning they look good and work well on mobile devices.
• Up-to-date theme architecture. Every theme in this article is updated to the newest Shopify 2.0 version, meaning they get regular updates and don’t lack in features.
• Flexible customization. Since free themes usually don’t have a lot of pre-designed templates to choose from, it’s important to have flexible customization options to tinker the design and structure of the website to fit your brand.

Should you use a free Shopify theme?

A free Shopify theme is a great option for businesses that are just starting out. If you don’t want to invest in a website right from the start, a free theme is a great choice.

However, premium Shopify themes cost money for a reason – they’re built better, they are more powerful and have more features. Sometimes, paying for a theme can benefit you in the long run because you won’t have to invest in a lot of third-party apps and plugins.

How to make a free Shopify theme better?

If your chosen Shopify theme doesn't contain all the functions you need, you can get them through multiple apps.

Image optimization

Creating high-quality images in the ideal format or size may be difficult. That's why opt for the TinyImg app. This app will automatically reduce your Shopify website's images, optimize them according to SEO principles, and keep the site fast.

Product Reviews

Customer testimonials provide social validation for brands and products. In case your theme lacks this attribute, try out any of the product review apps.

Currency conversion

If your shop is focused on the worldwide market, allowing your customer to pay with their affiliated currencies will increase their satisfaction. Also, it will boost sales. So, if your theme doesn't support currency conversion, add a Shopify currency converter app of your choice to your store.

Generally, there are a lot of useful Shopify apps that can help with SEO, referrals, purchase tracking, revenue optimization, and other marketing needs.

Final words

There are a lot of free Shopify themes out there. However, eCommerce merchants need to be careful as they choose because each theme is different, but with enough diligence everything is possible.

As for now, the best free Shopify theme is Dawn because it offers all the core features needed for a successful website, as well as a stylish yet timeless design that doesn’t over-clutter the website.

Share

About the author

Faustas Norvaisa

Faustas is a young digital marketing specialist with a strong focus on the areas of tech and e-commerce. Inspired by his abundant experience accumulated while working in various fields and industries, he has dedicated his professional years to helping others achieve their business-related goals. Faustas loves writing and sharing his insights with others, although it may sound like a cliche, his guiding motto is "sharing is caring".