When it comes to web development, not all of us are great designers. Even if you have an eye for design and can create your own themes or templates from scratch, sometimes the client does not want to pay for that work or it may be for your own personal project and you don’t want to spend days or weeks coming up with a design and then writing the HTML & CSS. Here are some fantastic resources for themes of all kinds ranging from general purpose to admin interfaces to shopping carts
HTML5 Up
HTML5 Up has around 40–50 really nice simple but elegant HTML5/CSS3 themes. Most of their themes are general purpose meaning you can use them for just about any type of website or application. They are all fully responsive and look great on mobile devices, fully customizable and are 100% free under the Creative Common license. Each theme offers a live demo with a navigation bar at the top to show you what it looks like on a desktop, tablet and mobile device.
What I really like about these themes is that they’re not too over complicated. Some themes, especially paid ones are so damn complicated it would be easier to just build custom than figure out how to set it up. These are very simple with minimal pages.
Start Bootstrap
Start Bootstrap is of course Bootstrap themes. They are all up to date version 4 themes and what I really like about the designs are they are really good starter themes. They are minimal and you can easily customize them. They also offer really nice looking admin UIs. So if you build a something like a blog or CMS, you have a really nice skin for the front-facing interface. I have used the admin themes in projects that I had built with PHP Codeigniter as well as Node and Express.js. If the free selection is not enough, they also offer even better looking premium themes. Like most sites like this, you can preview the themes before you download.
Templated.co
Templated.co is another great resource for free HTML5 themes. Right now they have a collection of almost 900 free themes that are free under Creative Commons. They are also very general purpose. Many have the large showcase area and then elegant boxes with icons below. They have some nice grid gallery type themes as well that would be nice for some kind of image sharing app. The live demos can be easily scrolled through so you can quickly find what you are looking for.
Free HTML5
freehtml5.co does have premium themes but they have many great looking free themes in all categories. There are lots of general purpose themes as well as everything from law firms to photography themes. Many of the themes have nice animations as well. Some are pure HTML and some are Bootstrap
Colorlib
Colorlib is a great site and they have lots of freebies. They have some unique categories like medical and travel based themes. They have some nice real estate front-end UIs, one of which I almost used for my Django course’s real estate app but in the end I decide to create my own. They have a large selection of standard HTML5 themes as well as some really cool WordPress themes. Their live preview browser is easy to use and you can quickly test out each theme
Zero Theme
ZeroTheme has 120+ free themes to choose from which are all responsive. 87 of them are HTML and 37 are Bootstrap 4. Each preview offers the desktop version and the responsive version inside of a mobile device wrapper so you can see exactly what it would look like on a smartphone. In my opinion a lot of the designs look very similar and there’s better free templates out there but you may find something you like
Styleshout
Styleshout has some really great looking responsive themes. I’m a fan of their landing pages. They have some that are single paged which makes them really easy to implement. They even have things like coming soon and 404 page themes which is really cool. Many of their themes have dynamic JavaScript features like countdowns and sliders. They also have a service where if you need customization you can pay a fee and have them do it which is great for non developers.
HTML5xCSS3
html5xcss3.com has around 500 free themes in all different categories. Many of them are Bootstrap based. In believe they have some WordPress themes as well. The designs are not super creative but they seem very simple and easy to get in and customize and implement a backend to or whatever it is that your doing. Like many of these sites, they also have some premium themes.
Admin UI Themes
Athemes has an article showcasing 20+ really nice admin interfaces. These can be used for virtually any type of control panel for a website or application. These admin panels are well designed and many have dynamic functionality such as charts and modals. Most are Bootstrap based but there are some material design and some regular HTML5.
Ecommerce Themes
Themewagon has an article showcasing a bunch of free HTML5 and Bootstrap 4 ecommerce shopping cart themes. They range from categories such as clothing/fashion to furniture to electronics but many are general purpose and could be used for any online shop. Whether you are building a platform from scratch or using something like Magento, these themes can be tweaked for any case
I hope you find this list useful. There are many great looking themes that you can implement in your own projects as well as your clients. I would definitely urge you to inform your client if you are going to use a pre-made theme and never pass it off as your own.
Chronicles of an Idle Mind 