Sometimes in life, you just want to keep things simple—and the same can be said for your web design. Perhaps you’re a photographer, designer, or illustrator looking to build your online portfolio and you want your work to do the talking. Luckily for you, there are plenty of simple WordPress gallery themes that do just that!
Top Creative WordPress Photo Gallery Themes
The best thing about selecting a portfolio gallery WordPress theme from Themeforest is you can make a seriously high-end site quickly and easily even without any web design or development experience. The majority of themes come with rapid support from developers too so if you do have any burning questions along the way then an expert will be on hand.
Read on for my round-up of 20 creative yet simple portfolio sites for 2020 that come with great photo gallery options.
1. Retine - A WordPress Theme for Photographers and Creatives
This theme is a true winner in terms of the flexibility it offers with your photography. You can create a stock photo website where you can sell your work, offer some imagery free of charge, and you can also create a client gallery where you can present your photo sets to clients in password-protected galleries. They can then review and approve photos using an in-built proofing tool.
There are also multiple options for photo albums where you can organize your imagery according to categories and preview each option in the lightbox—and, finally, there are plenty of gallery layouts to choose from so you can really make your homepage your own.
2. Pinhole - WordPress Gallery Theme for Photographers
With an average rating of five out of five stars, this photo gallery WordPress template just had to make the list. Pinhole comes with more than 30 gallery layouts so you’re in control of how you’d like to display your work, plus you can create your gallery structure and hierarchy using the native WordPress functionality so no additional pricey plugins are required.
The developers have put speed at the center of this template and by displaying a limited number of photos on the gallery page initially, even galleries with more than 100 photos will load quickly.
3. SceneOne | Photography Theme for WordPress
You can’t get much cleaner than this WordPress simple gallery theme, which also has collected an average rating of five out of five stars. It comes with some nice features like AJAX likes, which means you can interact with site visitors and see how much they like your work.
It comes with plugins like WooCommerce so you can quickly monetize your work and MailChimp so you can keep your fans updated with new imagery and deals. The option for a transparent menu is also a good touch.
4. Joker - Photo & Video Portfolio WordPress Theme for Photographers
With 13 predefined homepage layouts and at least 8 galleries available, this is another great option for a WordPress gallery template. The ‘grid wall’ layout option couldn’t be simpler, but coupled with eye-catching photography, it’s often exactly what’s needed.
This one works well across all major browsers, is multi-language optimized so you can quickly translate any text into your chosen dialogue, plus it’s fully responsive so you don’t need to worry about your photos not displaying well on users’ handheld devices.
5. Photography Travis-WordPress
For only $15, this is a WordPress photo gallery template that won’t break the bank but it comes with loads of high-end features. You can choose between light and dark themes depending on the mood of your imagery, plus you can easily create video as well as photo galleries if you want to bring your site to life.
Perhaps you want to show your product from all angles for example, this is a great feature to enable you to do just that.
6. Kinatrix | Photography Theme for WordPress
This WordPress gallery page template is packed with so many features it’s hard to pick which ones to include! Its protected galleries, fullscreen galleries, and portfolio galleries are all useful additions—there’s also good management tools that allow clients to pick their favorite selects quickly and easily.
Fullscreen imagery can be displayed which helps to give the site an added wow factor.
7. Photosy - Photography WordPress Theme
This simple portfolio theme is definitely one of my personal favorites, partly because of the option for a split slider on the homepage. You can create a really effective homepage by uploading connected but different imagery, allowing the user to scroll as more images unfold. Photosy also supports video and audio content so you’re not limited in terms of the multimedia you want to publish to the world. It’s fully responsive, SEO-friendly, and comes with Contact Form 7 so new and current clients can seamlessly get in touch.
8. APOLO - Premium Portfolio HTML Template
For only $19, this is another low-cost WordPress gallery template that looks way more expensive than it actually is. The ‘Masonry Fit Width 3 Columns’ option is particularly eye-catching as when you scroll over an image, further details are revealed in a creative asymmetric way.
You can choose between 7 headers and 8 pre-made homepages too which are sure to spark some ideas of how you’d like your own site to look.
9. Flying - Interactive Portfolio WordPress Theme
This is a memorable WordPress gallery theme that has its own style. The image gallery on the site’s homepage springs to life as soon as it’s touched by the cursor and reveals further information about the photo or featured product.
You can also easily sort and filter the imagery in your portfolio according to different categories, so any user can find what they’re looking for more quickly.
10. KingSize Fullscreen Photography Theme
With almost 20,000 sales, the KingSize WordPress theme photo album certainly has been tried and tested—and with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 based on 1,745 reviews, it clearly has a lot of fans.
This one comes with 7 galleries and supports all types of images as well as MP4, YouTube, Vimeo, and other embeds. It also offers unlimited colors or skins so you can customize the theme to suit your photography or general branding.
11. LENS - An Enjoyable Photography WordPress Theme
Not only does this WordPress theme photo album ooze style, but it comes with loads of features to help you spread the word about your business. It’s social-friendly so includes the Tweets widget as well as article sharing capability on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter—as well as social meta tags and icons.
There are also more than 600 google fonts to choose from and unlimited colors so you can let your creativity go to town and ensure your WordPress gallery theme represents you in the right way.
12. Almera | Model Agency & Photo Portfolio WordPress Theme
This WordPress gallery theme has been around for some time—it was first introduced back in 2013. That being said, it’s updated regularly, with the latest update in May this year, so it’s certainly not being left behind.
The developers seem to genuinely understand the needs of its users and therefore unlimited portfolios and galleries are included. It comes with video tutorials which are the first port of call for any questions along the way, plus it collects many top reviews for its customer support.
13. Core | Photography
You can’t get much cooler than this template which offers a subtle reflection below each of the images displayed. The horizontal slide action forces the eye to pay attention to each of the photos in the gallery, it’s a distinct feature as many templates tend to opt for vertical scrolling.
It comes complete with widgets including recent posts and popular posts to help you keep your content fresh.
14. Photography WordPress
With 24 demos and more than 70 gallery and portfolio layouts, this is a photo gallery WordPress template with customization at its heart. It’s hard to pick a favorite layout as the template offers so much variety—you can either choose to display one image on the homepage or a selection of your best shots. This one also offers the option to add a direct purchase link so visitors can instantly buy after viewing a gallery slideshow.
15. KON/CEPT - A Portfolio Theme for Creative People
A real perk of this template is the ability to combine any vertical with horizontal imagery without impacting the site’s seamless design. Plus, depending on the amount of content you’d like to display, you can choose between 4, 3, and 2 column grids—a great option if you’re just starting out and will be adding to your photography as you go along.
You also have lots of flexibility in terms of navigation styles and can choose from full, sidebar, minimal, or classic.
16. Oyster - Photography
Gutenberg optimized, this template is not only super customizable, it couldn’t be easier to use—simply drag and drop content blocks to where you want them to live and away you go.
Again, this is a template that has it all—fullscreen design to show off your favorite pics, it’s responsive and retina-ready, it offers light and dark skins, plus it supports fullscreen video. The image flow gallery is a particularly attractive feature.
17. Novo – Photography WordPress Theme
This almost brooding site puts the photography front and center—in fact, it entirely removes other distractions completely. The way the images scroll through the site gives the template a luxurious and high-quality feel. It also offers simple photo optimization to prevent any slow loading times which can negatively impact bounce rate.
Although this one has loads of features so will have a wide appeal, its sophisticated vibe means it would very much belong to an ultra-cool design studio.
18. Grand Photography WordPress
With the developers boasting more than 100,000 happy customers, if you opt for the Grand template you’ll be far from the first to invest in this theme. Also, with more than 144 predesigned galleries and pages, it’s easy to imagine how your own WordPress site can look. My favorite gallery option is ‘Justified Wide’ as it offers the chance to hero a shot while also allowing users the chance to quickly scroll through others to see if any other imagery is more suitable for their needs.
19. Umbrella - Photography WordPress Theme
This template screams cool. Almost looking like it belongs to the pages of a high-end fashion magazine, the full-width imagery naturally scrolls with smooth animations, allowing the users to be naturally guided through the portfolio. Videos are also fully supported.
20. Maroon - Photography
A great thing about this theme is although photography remains the focus, there’s plenty of room to either add copy to tell your story or play around with the image sizes to best fit the content you have available (or both!). There are 32 galleries to choose from so you can find the perfect match.
Now the Fun Begins!
There you have it, 20 creative WordPress photo gallery themes to take you into 2020. Although I’ve picked my favorites, there are plenty of other excellent templates to discover over on ThemeForest so do make sure to check it out. Did I miss a template you think deserves to make the cut? Let us know in the comments below!
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