One of your first tasks in creating a website is choosing a theme that fits your vision for your site. This guide will show you how to search for a theme and apply it to your website.
In this guide
All themes offered by WordPress.com are mobile-friendly, accessibility-ready, and professionally designed for modern web standards. To browse our ever-growing collection of themes:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Appearance → Themes:
Using the filter buttons in the upper-right corner of the screen, you can choose to show only Free, Partner, Included with Starter, Included with Explorer, or WooCommerce themes to narrow your search.
Outlined below is what each category will display:
- Free: Themes available to all sites on WordPress.com.
- Partner: Themes available to purchase on all sites with a Creator plan or higher. Learn more in our Partner Themes guide.
- Included with Starter: Themes available to all sites on WordPress.com with the Starter plan or higher. Visit our Premium Themes guide to learn more.
- Included with Explorer: Themes available to all sites on WordPress.com with an Explorer plan or higher. Visit our Premium Themes guide to learn more.
- WooCommerce: Themes for an online store, available to all sites on WordPress.com with a Creator or Entrepreneur plan.
Partner and WooCommerce themes will display tags below the theme thumbnail to indicate they are either Partner or WooCommerce themes.
Use the search bar at the top of the screen to search for themes by name or feature. You can further narrow your theme search by selecting a category from the list beneath the search bar.
On any plugin-enabled plan, you can also search for themes developed by the WordPress community, such as Astra, OceanWP, and more. Search for your favorite community theme, and look for the “Community” tag under the theme thumbnail.
Click the theme’s thumbnail to load the info section and view additional information about the theme. In the info section you will also have the following options:
- Activate this design: Apply the theme to your site.
- Preview & Customize: Preview the theme with your site’s content.
Some themes include different style variations to further personalize the look of your site.
Click the colored circles in the lower-right corner to see the same theme with different color schemes and font choices applied.
You can activate the theme with your preferred style variation. You can make further changes to the colors and fonts after activating the theme.
Once you have decided on the theme you would like to use, follow these steps to apply it to your website:
- Starting from your dashboard, navigate to Appearance → Themes.
- Click the thumbnail of the theme you want to activate.
- Click the “Activate this design“
- A window will appear explaining that your site’s current homepage will be replaced by the new theme’s homepage layout. If you wish to proceed, tick the box and click the “Activate” button.
- In a few seconds, the new theme will be applied to your site. Click the “Customize this design” button to start working on your site’s new design.
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When you activate a theme, your existing content carries over. Nothing is deleted so it’s perfectly safe to switch (and you can always switch back to your old theme if you change your mind.)
If you get an error that reads “Unable to activate theme. Contact customer support” you may be able to resolve this error on your own by checking the following:
- If you are activating a theme on a site that does not have plugins enabled, try to Solve Common Browser Issues and attempt to activate the theme again.
- If you are activating a theme on a site with plugins, check for a theme or plugin conflict with the following guide: Solve Problems With Plugins.
