Best 9 Shopify FREE themes of 2021 for Beginners

If you want to get a fully-functional eCommerce website quickly, Shopify can be a perfect platform. Luckily, there are plenty of Shopify free themes to customize your Shopify site. Moreover, many of the top options are free, so you don’t even need a generous budget.

So, we’re going to introduce you to the nine best Shopify free themes of 2021 for beginners. Let’s take a look! 

#1. Shopify Theme Free: DEBUT

Debut Shopify Theme is your default setting Shopify theme for your brand-new store. This theme is a flexible one that is suitable for all kinds of stores. With Debut, you can quickly set up a store and start selling.   

Debut is genuinely for you if you want to:

• Start selling right away, without the need to make a lot of complicated customizations to your Shopify theme.
• Make sure your store displays well on tablets and smartphones.
• Easily arrange your store layout, and see your changes immediately.

Styles

Shopify offers two different styles: Default and Light. Both of them are simple, attractive, and suitable for any store.

Features

• Slideshow: Debut Shopify Theme has a slideshow feature for the home page so you can display multiple products or brand photography.
• Predictive search: It helps display live search results and quick links for products and store pages.
• Customer testimonials: In the Debut Theme, you can show reviews from your customers on your homepage or product pages. This way is one of the best ways to build trust, and it does wonders for your website’s SEO performance.
• Promotional banner: Promote your latest sale, promotion, or discount at the top of your store’s home page.
• Built for small catalogs: This theme is ideal for stores with a small number of products.
• Home page video: The Debut theme also offers a great video section on the homepage, helping you to tell your story through a YouTube or Vimeo video. This feature can help make your brand more engaging. 
• Product recommendations: Showcase recommended products on product pages to increase discoverability.
• Product filtering: This feature allows customers to filter products by category, price, best selling, and so on. It’s a fundamental product filter, though you can always upgrade it with a third-party app later on.

Pros

If you are feeling indecisive about which theme to choose and/or if you are in a hurry to set up shop as quickly as possible, this is a very safe bet. Debut looks fantastic even without any severe theme customizations.

Cons 

Here’s another Shopify theme free that gets poor reviews when it comes to mobile. The chief complaint is image resolution, with some users going so far as to call it ‘deplorable.’ 

Business Category

• Jewelry & Accessories 
• Furniture

#2. Shopify Theme Free: NARRATIVE

Narrative Shopify Theme is perfect for visual storytelling thanks to featuring a bold hero video (or slideshow). It serves as the ideal complement for a single product business or a store with a small catalog of items.

Styles 

Earthy is the newest Narrative style that has released lately. There is a series of sections where you can upload more photos and texts like the one in the Earthy style. In some parts, you can add a button to the text area.

Warm is the most conventional of the four styles. It features traditional fonts and photos in their natural colors with surrounding neutral colors.

Cast in white, Light has a clean, minimalist aesthetic that makes it perfect for contemporary stores.

Cold is primarily dark with a black cast over the header photo.

The intensity of its colors makes it great for conveying a dramatic or inspirational product message.

Features

Narrative Shopify Theme makes product storytelling easy with these standout features:

• Built for small catalogs: Ideal for stores with a single product or a small number of products.
• Hero video: Autoplay, fullscreen video at the top of your home page.

• Full layout: a full-width layout for showcasing large, high-res images
• Vertical slideshow: the vertical display of images, blog posts, and more on your home page
• Fixed navigation: fix your menu, logo, and cart at the top as customers scroll through the page. 

Pros

With great videos and image blocks, Narrative’s design is much more immersive and captivating than a typical series of product photos.

Narrative is also ideal for showcasing product details through pictures since it can handle large, high-res photos.

Cons

Narrative users have complained that the template’s product page design is limited. For example, it places a cap on product description length, and the layout is challenging to reformat.

Business category 

• Art & Photography 
• Clothing & Fashion 
• Jewelry & Accessories
• Food & Drink 
• Home & Garden 
• Sport & Recreation 

#3. Shopify Theme Free: BROOKLYN

Modern apparel businesses should find the perfect fit for Brooklyn Shopify Theme: shoes, clothing, sunglasses, and so on. With turn-key features like a slide-out cart, so customers can easily add items without having to leave the page, Brooklyn will ensure your store looks as good as your clothes⁠ – and converts, too. 

Styles

Shopify offers the Brooklyn Shopify theme in two styles: Classic and Playful.

Classic is a neutral style with its traditional font, as well as white and black CTA (call to action) boxes.

Playful also has a simple layout, but is much more energizing with its brighter color scheme and slightly less stuffy font Sans-Serif.

The clean aesthetic of both styles makes Brooklyn ideal for stores that want a sleek, modern feel.

Features

• Designed for modern apparel stores: Tailored to contemporary apparel stores with a focus on brand imagery.
• Header slideshow: Showcase multiple products or brand images at the top of your home page.
• Dynamic product grid: The layout of your products changes automatically based on how many are displayed.
• Slide-out cart: Customers can easily add to their cart without leaving their current page.
• Home page video: Tell your story by featuring a YouTube or Vimeo video front and center.

Pros

Brooklyn has a 73% positive rating from 70 reviews, a high score for Shopify theme free.

The template’s clean and straightforward design is excellent because it’s easy on the eyes and is easy to update with the content on the backend.

Cons

Users have reported issues with product image placements in Brooklyn. The template automatically stacks images on top of one another if more than 3 are added for a product, which creates an annoyingly long scrolling path.

Users have also reported issues with image resizing. This problem includes pictures becoming too big once they’re uploaded on the site or high res photos decreasing in quality once they’re uploaded.

Business Category 

• Food & Drink
• Clothing & Fashion 

#4. Shopify Theme Free: SIMPLE

Simple Shopify Theme lets your products do the talking. Featuring built-in product recommendations and image zoom for every product, Simple takes a backseat so customers can appreciate the finer details of your catalog. 

As another minimal option, this Shopify theme free is ideal for sellers who want their products and not their website to be center stage. The advantages of using this theme include:

• Highly responsive mobile design. 
• Image animations. 
• Zoom on product pictures. 

Styles 

Light is the most stripped-down style. It’s primarily filled with white space, though the logo placement in the upper left-hand corner is a perfect opportunity to add color. The sidebar is clean and straightforward.

Beauty and Toy are nearly identical to Light, having the sidebar filled in with color closes in the white space, making the site feel a cozier feeling for users who want a warmer feel.

Features

• Sidebar menu: Feature an accordion-style list in your sidebar to easily display your products and collections.
• Product image zoom: Give customers a closer look and extra product details when they hover over an image.
• Image animations: Product and brand images animate into the page to create a sleek, transition effect.
• Product recommendations: Showcase recommended products on product pages to increase discoverability.

Pros

Users praise Simple for being so user-friendly, like its name. With features like the sidebar menu and slide-out cart, Pop makes site content incredibly easy to see and navigate through organically.

Cons

A downside of Simple is that the sidebar on its mobile version doesn’t say “Menu,” which can be confusing for users.

Business Category

• Art & Photography
• Clothing & Fashion
• Health & Beauty 

#5. Shopify Theme Free: MINIMAL  

Minimal Shopify Theme eliminates visual distractions to focus on what you’re selling. With its lack of clutter, Minimal is an excellent pick for the company that wants no design as its design.

Styles

Minimal comes in three styles: Vintage, Fashion, and Modern.

Vintage is the most understated of the three styles. Other than the colored photos, the template is almost entirely white with a simple font.

Fashion is somewhat bold, yet still very simple, with its black top bar, font, and logo circle. These subtle hints of darkness make bits of color in photos pop out.

Modern is the most detailed of the three styles with its large, centered logo and slightly textured background.

Even with these additional features, Modern still maintains a neat, crisp look.

Features

• Home page slideshow: can be used at the top of your homepage to showcase multiple products
• Product image zoom: a closer view of an image appears when users hover their mouse over to show more product details
• Related product display: shows products from the same collection on a product’s page so customers can keep on shopping. 

• Home page video: feature a YouTube or Vimeo video front and center on your home page
• Product filtering: allows customers on collection pages to filter products by type or sort by best sellers and price

Pros

Minimal has a solid reputation with an 86% positive rating from 57 reviews. It’s also one of the most popular Shopify free themes, with over 15,000 sites using it.

Users praise Minimal for being very user-friendly and for being very easy to customize on the backend.

Cons

The downside of this Shopify theme’s minimalist aesthetic is, it is less able to include additional content and navigation tools, like a sidebar and a blog.

Business Category 

• Art & Photography
• Clothing & Fashion
• Furniture

#6. Shopify Theme Free: SUPPLY 

Supply Shopify Theme is an ideal pick for online stores with a large number of products. With its filtering tools, Supply is well-equipped to showcase large inventories. 

Styles

Shopify offers Supply in 2 styles: Blue and Light.

Blue is clean and straightforward, featuring a lot of white space and a single-colored top menu.

Light has a more traditional feel with its use of classic fonts, neutral shades, and bordering for header images.

Features

Supply is perfect for showcasing large catalogs because of its exceptional layout features:

• Collection filtering in sidebar: users can filter collections by brand, price and other customizable categories

• Home page slideshow: can be used at the top of your homepage to showcase multiple products
• Featured collections: site can feature various product collections on home page

Pros

Supply’s features offer many ways to categorize and organize items, so it’s great for showcasing large amounts of products.

Supply also has a solid reputation. Positive reviews for it date back to 2014, earlier than most Shopify free themes, so you know it’s been successful for years.

Cons

Users report that Supply is a bit more challenging to customize than others. 

Since Shopify optimizes it for companies with substantial inventories, Supply does sacrifice a perfectly clean aesthetic as it gets visually cluttered with products.

Business Category 

• Jewelry & Accessory
• Electronics 

#7. Shopify Theme Free: VENTURE 

Venture Shopify Theme is another one of our Shopify free themes that’s tailor-made for large product catalogs. It includes a multi-column menu so you can showcase granular details in a drop-down menu. You’ll also be able to highlight a single flagship product should you so choose.

Styles 

That Shopify theme has three styles. These are Snowboards, Outdoors, and Boxing. The layout for these designs on both the desktop and mobile versions are the same. The key differentiator is the color palette used. Snowboards is a little laid back, as the site has a gray undertone. Outdoors has a bright hue and uses flesh as the primary color palette, while boxing has a dark and brooding tone. 

Snowboards style is the first one with a Snowboarding style that offers a blue-colored text highlight with the grey palette, which is excellent for selling snowboarding and other snow tools. It is also suitable for selling water-activity products. 

 The second one is Outdoors, which provides its exciting adventures in the layout. As a result, it can bring a rugged look for online stores to sell camping and trekking products.

The last one is Boxing style, which has a pretty clear layout, also a dark and red palette. With this outlook, it is suitable for selling t-shirts and other accessories that are related to boxing, martial arts, MMA, and many more.

Features 

• Built for large catalogs: Ideal for stores with a large number of products.
• Multi-column menu: Images feature product details in an extensive, multi-column drop-down menu.
• Slideshow: Showcase multiple products or brand images on your home page.
• Promotional banner: Promote your latest sale, promotion, or discount at the top of your store’s home page.
• Product filtering: Allow customers to filter products by type and sort by best sellers and price on the collection page.
• Single featured product: Promote a single product by featuring it front and center on your home page.

Business Category 

• Sport & Recreation

#8. Shopify Theme Free: BOUNDLESS

Want to showcase your beautiful product photos on your homepage? Boundless is a minimalist Shopify theme that puts your photography front and center so you can show off your best products. 

The Boundless Shopify Theme is the right pick for shop owners who must have great visuals to improve their conversion. It allows them to post quality pictures, which are critical for their success in the various niches of the e-commerce industry.

Styles 

The Boundless theme is a clean, free background that improves the look of any Shopify store. It allows you to showcase excellent images to help boost your sales. The pictures help create a memorable impression of your shop and highlight the quality products in your inventory. 

It is easy when using this Shopify theme in all 2 styles. You only have to download it or integrate it with your Shopify shop. Once you are through, you can add quality photos, excellent product descriptions, and a stunning web page.

While the Boundless theme is mainly for bringing out your excellent photography skills, it also performs essential functions like other backgrounds. It caters for functionalities such as sticky navigation, homepage video, and search optimization.

Features

• Optimized for large images: Showcase high-resolution product imagery throughout your store.
• Slideshow with fading effect: Feature multiple products or brand images in a fade-effect slideshow on your home page.
• Sticky navigation: Keep menus fixed to the top of your page as you scroll down.
• Single product gallery: Feature large, high-resolution images in a dedicated product gallery.
• Full-width collection images: Collection images are presented in a full-width grid layout, great for showcasing product imagery.
• Home page video: Tell your story by featuring a YouTube or Vimeo video front and center.

Pros

Boundless is optimized for large images and features full-width collection images. Users love how modern and sleek this Shopify theme looks if you have the right photos.

Cons

On the flip side, having such an image-heavy theme means you can’t get away with sloppy photo editing. Users will have to keep an eye on their image size and resolution. There’s also only one option for image-related homepage sections, the ‘image with text’ section.

Business Category

• Clothing & Fashion 
• Sports & Recreation 

Wrapping Up 

Themes are critical for a successful eCommerce business. It helps you better your competition through smooth processes and great visuals. Theme setup helps users showcase the quality images of their products to prospective buyers; therefore, it influences the decision of the buyer in favor of your business.

Try one of these Shopify free themes on your store today, and you will reap from it in no time.

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