WordPress Tips
To keep people on your site and turn them into regular visitors, you should do much more than just post the information relevant to their queries. Some owners of websites engage the audience with large imagery in the header and backgrounds, while others make their portals more interactive by filling them with video content. There are also those who use tiny, yet catchy, graphic elements such as icons, pre-loaders, counters and other gimmicks. It is a win-win option to combine all the mention tricks on the page and animate it with a parallax scrolling effect.
This technique was brought to the web design industry in 2011, and since then many designers have started using it in their projects. Implemented on pages, it makes their layers move at different paces while scrolling, which adds a three-dimensional look to sites. The parallax effect is considered to be one of the most effective ways of storytelling, calling to action and, therefore, increasing conversion rates. For that reason, it has become a versatile solution for sites of almost any kind, from blogs and personal portfolios to corporate portals and online stores.
In this post, you will find a set of both premium and free parallax themes powered by WordPress. Thus, you will be able to choose a proper design for your website regardless of the budget, to which you have to stick. So, don’t hesitate to look through our selection below.
**Helpful Tip: When picking out a WordPress theme, be sure to check out my WordPress Tips article on advice on how to decide which WordPress theme to go with. It’s a informative read and will surely help you make your decision easier.
Top of the 10 Free Parallax WordPress Themes for 2015
If you are eager to experiment with the parallax scrolling technique or just test it on your site, check our set of free parallax WordPress themes. Although they are available at no cost, they look as cool as their premium alternatives. The only thing we would like to remind you is to back up your site before installing them. Just in case.
SKT Black
Demo | Download
The first free parallax theme on our list is a multipurpose solution for blogs, portfolios, corporate portals, and online stores due to its compatibility with WooCommerce. SKT Black is remarkable for a parallax slider, where you can add up to 5 images, and smooth CSS3 animations. This SMO- and SEO-ready theme is also supplied with easy-to-use options and a standard set of pages.
AccessPress Parallax
Demo | Download
AccessPress Parallax is a versatile WP theme featuring parallax backgrounds throughout its layout, from portfolio to blog sections. It is a breeze to customize its look due to an advanced options panel, multiple posts settings and easy-to-configure slider. You can also optionally add social media icons to the header or footer.
Swell Lite
Demo | Download
Swell Lite is a responsive WP theme suitable for online magazines, newspapers, blogs, and other informational resources. It has a parallax header image providing a dynamic scrolling experience for visitors. The theme is also minimal and lightweight, which will make pages on your site load faster.
Business One
Demo | Download
This retina-ready WordPress theme is based on a masonry layout enlivened with parallax backgrounds. It also features advanced custom fields, dynamic widgets, Google fonts, preloaders, Font Awesome icons, contact form, Google map, and much more. Powered by Redux Framework, the theme is fully responsive, including video, text and images in a full-width slider that supports touch-enabled navigation.
Hemingway
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Hemingway boasts a clean design with a parallax header, large imagery and sharp typography. In its package, you will also find a color customizer, logo upload option, and custom widgets for video, Flickr and Dribbble. Built with a translation-ready code, this blogging theme will provide you with an opportunity to deliver the content to an international readership.
Zerif Lite
Demo | Download
Zerif Lite is a tablet- and mobile-friendly theme with a one-page layout designed in the flat style. The parallax effect is used here to cheer up the hero area, ribbon section and contact form at the bottom of the page. As the theme is multilingual ready, its default text can be easily translated without modifying the source code.
I Am One
Demo | Download
Here is another single-page WP theme featuring a parallax effect in its design, or, to be exact – in the slider. Its homepage comprises over 10 sections for different types of content, e.g. about info, statistics, services, testimonials, contacts, gallery with a lightbox, etc. This theme is compatible with WooCommerce, bbPress, Contact form 7 and other popular plugins.
Mixed
Demo | Download
Mixed is a flat WordPress theme with a parallax slider scalable to any screen, be it a desktop, tablet or mobile phone. Powered by Twitter Bootstrap 3 and Redux Framework, the theme also performs well in today’s browsers. If you choose this package for your site, you will receive access to 8 widgets, advanced custom fields, Font Awesome icons, Google fonts, and more.
Moesia
Demo | Download
Moesia has a parallax full-screen header, and this effect can also be applied to each of its 11 pre-defined blocks. To characterize this WP theme in short, it is responsive, translation-ready, and future-proof. Moesia is also packed with 2 types of the blog page layout and 5 custom widgets to display Youtube videos, show the latest posts with thumbs, and for various other purposes.
Altitude Lite
Demo | Download
Altitude Lite is a sleek yet simple and lightweight WordPress theme with a parallax header image. Its responsive layout is automatically adapted to screens of any resolution, which can increase the extent of your business reach. The theme is also prebuilt with a customizer to help you change its look the way you like.
Top of the 10 Premium Parallax WordPress Themes for 2015
First of all, check premium parallax WordPress themes suitable for different business niches. If you are interested in seeing more than 10 designs enhanced with this dynamic effect, you can find a large number of them here, namely over 200 unique options made in different styles.
Xroadz WordPress Theme
Demo | More Info
The first premium WordPress theme in our selection is Xroadz enlivened with a parallax slideshow at the top of the page. Its design is also notable for a striking contrast of a crystal clear layout with dark footer and header. In terms of the functionality, this business theme is packed with an extensive set of features such as a Google map, contact form, calendar and online chat, to name a few.
Web Design Responsive WordPress Theme
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This design features a parallax slider with full-screen images and a parallax background in the block with animated counters. In addition to the slider, the theme has some other scripts, namely Accordion, Carousel and Isotope, to improve the presentation of your image content. There is also a filterable gallery that enables website visitors to sort projects by categories. It can make their search easier and more effective.
Marketing Agency Responsive WordPress Theme
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The next parallax WordPress theme listed in our post is intended for marketing and consulting agencies, but can also be adapted to any other business niche. The parallax effect is applied to its full-screen imagery in the slider and block with testimonials. What’s more, the homepage of this responsive theme is also enhanced with hover and lazy load effects to provide an engaging user experience.
Financial Consultancy WordPress Theme
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If you want to add some vigor to your financial site and retain its professional look at the same time, this WP theme is just the job for you. It keeps a perfect balance between formality and parallax scrolling dynamism, in addition to the slider in the header and background of the content block above the footer. The theme’s palette represents a harmony of blue, grey, white and black colors that contribute to its reserved tone.
Web Design Responsive WordPress Theme
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Here is an example of a design making minimal use of the parallax effect. In fact, you can observe it only in the section featuring team quotes, which is located under the gallery with the latest projects. Although this theme is visually minimal and clean, it is integrated with many useful options, e.g. audio, video, 4 gallery types, social media icons and sharing buttons.
Architecture Responsive WordPress Theme
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Consider this WPML-ready theme to update your architecture-related site. The parallax scrolling technique is implemented on the large hero area and section with a blurred image in the background. As the theme is based on the responsive layout, the parallax blocks will look impeccable on screens of mobile devices and high-resolution monitors.
Software Company Responsive WordPress Theme
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Check another mobile-friendly WordPress theme, where a large hero area is spiced up with the parallax effect. Powered by flexible Cherry Framework, it offers multiple options of customization and doesn’t require amendments to its code. The theme will let you build not only what is visually appealing but also a future-proof portal due to utilization of the latest web development features, particularly CSS3, HTML5, jQuery and LESS.
Web Design Storage WordPress Theme
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This WP theme combines two hot trends at once, i.e. the parallax effect and material design backgrounds, to which it is applied. Clean, white content sections bring the information into focus, and refined fonts from the Google library improve its readability. If you would like to fine-tune this theme, an intuitive admin panel and multiple shortcodes will assist you in your undertaking.
Cafe and Restaurant Responsive WordPress Theme
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Make your food-related site more vivid using this WordPress theme integrated with Bootstrap functions. In its design, a full-screen header image and a feedback section are enhanced with the parallax effect. This full-featured package contains custom post types, page templates and advanced options for multimedia, navigation and communication purposes.
Restaurant Management WordPress Theme
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Welcome to the last premium WP theme from our set. With its help, you can add parallax slideshows to your website header and parallax backgrounds to blog posts. Packed with sliced PSD, the theme is easy to edit, and cross-browser compatibility ensures it works effectively in windows of all the browsers used today.
I hope I have been able to help you find the right parallax WP theme for your online portal. Tastes do differ, but there is a wide selection of themes to choose from that can satisfy almost any preference.
In conclusion, I’d be grateful if you would share your impressions about these suggested themes. Which one from the group appeals to you the most? Looking forward to reading your comments!
