Top 5 Best Retro WordPress Themes for 2023

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Ben Sibley

“These themes are hand-picked for their outstanding design quality, features, and customer reviews.”

Want a classic looking site for your blog or portfolio?

This collection of retro themes features the best and most user-friendly vintage themes. They nail the retro vibe better than other themes and have a host of additional benefits too.

You’ll find plenty of flexibility in these themes thanks to their many customizable settings, and they can be used for a variety of niches too. Use one of these themes for a retro wedding site, eCommerce store, blog, or portfolio.

Check out this collection of simple WordPress themes too for more options.

Retro WordPress themes

The themes below are all highly-rated by their customers thanks to their design quality and expansive feature sets. If you want a cool retro theme for your website, you can’t beat these top WP themes.

Here are my top picks for best retro WordPress themes for 2024.


  • 1. Retro Portfolio by OpenDept. (Themeforest)

    Retro Portfolio

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    Theme Description

    Out of all the themes, Retro Portfolio nails the retro aesthetic better than any other. It really distills an old-school sense of style reminiscent of art deco and the ’20s. If you’re a gamer, you may even be reminded of stylish city of Rapture set in the Bioshock universe ?

    Retro Portfolio could work great for a blog, but it has some additional capabilities that make it great for a complete portfolio site. One thing you should know about this theme is that it’s designed as a one-page theme. You can publish additional pages, but the menu is designed to navigate you to different sections of the homepage. Of course, there’s plenty of space to include an entire filterable portfolio right on the homepage.

    The Retro Portfolio theme has been around for quite a while now (go figure) and has received tons of positive reviews over the years. It has a 4.44/5 average on Themeforest from over 400+ customer ratings. If you like what you see on the demo, you’re sure to enjoy this theme for your site.

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  • 2. Retro by Olegnax (Themeforest)

    Retro

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    Theme Description

    Retro is a unique and aptly named WordPress theme with an old-school look. Most of its old-fashioned charm is owed to the use of the Bazar typeface throughout the design which looks great.

    The Retro theme is simple but can be used for a variety of niches and purposes. It can work well for a blog or a business site. There is a portfolio template for showcasing any media or graphics you’ve created and complete WooCommerce integration. That means you can even launch a online store right on your website.

    Regarding its features, Retro comes with a nice variety of customization options. There are custom colors, five pre-defined skins, and shortcodes for adding special types of content into posts and pages. Furthermore, there is Google Fonts support for providing over 500+ different fonts to choose from, social sharing button integration, and Retro comes bundled with the Slider Revolution plugin for building beautiful and responsive image sliders.

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  • 3. Vintage Immersed by designthemes (Themeforest)

    Vintage Immersed

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    Theme Description

    Vintage Immersed makes use of bold fonts, strong colors, and textures to create a retro style. In terms of function, it’s got a focus on web design studios and small businesses, so these types of organizations would be best served by this WP theme.

    The homepage design features a prominent slider with a handful of transition animations to choose from. Like other vintage themes here, Vintage Immersed features a logo centered in its primary menu. It makes for a unique and stylish presentation.

    This old-fashioned theme comes with five skins and various patterns to choose from. As for the slider, there are three different sliders available to choose from which provides a ton of flexibility for customization and personal taste. With a filterable portfolio gallery and six custom widgets, you can take the content specialization even further with the Vintage Immersed theme.

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  • 4. Extinct by LiveMesh (Themeforest)

    Extinct

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    Theme Description

    Extinct has its own distinct spin on the retro look. It’s got a background texture like matte paper and consistent use of a slab-serif typeface. While it doesn’t use the recognizable Bazar font like some other themes here, it manages to emulate the vintage aesthetic with other visual cues like the multi-shade drop shadows in the headings.

    If you check out the demo site, you’ll see the homepage has quite a few different sections. Extinct integrates with the SiteOrigin page builder plugin to allow you to create completely custom page layouts. You can use any default widget or one of Extinct’s 20 custom widgets for building unique pages.

    In addition to the page building functionality, Extinct also has sliders, built-in shortcodes, and a complete admin options panel. You can change colors, customize the menus, and much more all from the dashboard of this flexible and elegant theme.

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  • 5. Vintage Wedding by Crafted Pixels (Themeforest)

    Vintage Wedding

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    Theme Description

    Need a WordPress theme for a vintage themed wedding? Well, you can’t do better than the Vintage Wedding theme.

    Vintage Wedding is a wedding theme with a classic style. It makes use of paper-like textures to create an effect that looks like an invitation or RSVP and comes with all the page components you need for a practical and helpful wedding site. Right up top the bride and groom and be featured along with their names, and there are a countdown timer and image gallery amongst other components.

    This retro WP theme has a filterable photo gallery, bride and groom photo space in the header, WooCommerce support, ten page-templates, and twelve widget areas. Vintage Wedding also comes bundled with a WordPress plugin for handling RSVP and wedding invitations.

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Which retro WordPress theme is best for you?

If you need a retro-style theme for a small website, Retro Portfolio is your best option. It nails the old-fashioned look and is very user-friendly. As a one-page site, it’s perfect for a design studio or other small business. If you want a portfolio website, but want more than a simple one-page template, consider the Vintage Immersed theme.

Extinct is a more feature-rich theme that also has an excellent retro aesthetic. Visitors will instantly recognize and appreciate the vintage style of this theme. If you want another alternative for a general web template, the Retro theme is also a great option.

Lastly, Vintage Wedding is an obvious choice for anyone who wants to bring an old-fashioned style to their wedding website.

Use the comment form below to ask any questions you have about these retro WordPress themes.

Ben Sibley
Ben Sibley
This article was written by Ben Sibley. He is a WordPress theme designer & developer, and founder of Compete Themes.