These themes all demonstrate the excellent skill of incorporating vivid color.  Designers have masterfully chosen color pallets… sometimes wide ranging, sometimes simple.  Have your own example of a great use of color in a WP theme?  Please share as a comment below.

Shadow is a powerful design element that adds depth to any design.  A talented designer can create multiple layers and dimension where there was none.  These sites are selected from some of Theme Forest’s best.

Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s subtle.  But shadow creates a depth of focus and quality in a web design.  Check them out! Note: Affiliate links below.

Below are 15 examples of stunning, professional and effective WordPress designs.  These sites took various design elements into account including the use of negative space, color contrast, eye-popping dimension.  They utilized various textures and color palettes to impress the viewer.  Enjoy!

We are constantly watching for amazing new WordPress themes that are both free and commercial.  One of the places we look for new talent is ThemeForest, a marketplace for all sorts of web themes.  When we find something exceptional, we add it to the Pingable collection.  Check out the Pingable collection periodically for new, stunning WordPress themes.

Check out the Themeforest collection here.

WordPress themes have come a long way. As the exceptional WordPress team builds in more and more features, they give web designers tons of options for creativity and innovation in theme design. We hope that this post brings up trends in WordPress themes that you have noticed, but didn’t know you noticed.

People are really digging the simple, white background themes. Maybe we are all moving on from the flashy website phase and into the simple-is-better phase.

Social media is all the rage. Every blog now has a Twitter Bird and an orange RSS image somewhere above the fold. This is the bare minimum, there is typically many more options for sharing their content.

Contextual themes are becoming more popular. These are the themes that look like they belong somewhere like on someone's desk or in a notebook.

I know we just talked about white being popular, but so is tasteful use of color. Not just a colored background, but a range of popping, eye-catching colors.

Having various style sheets is quickly becoming a standard feature of premium/commercial WordPress themes. Not only does thi smean color options, but full dashboard settings pages to change how your theme behaves. A word of warning to the WordPress developers and theme creators: DON'T BECOME LIKE JOOMLA!

Rounded corners are popular recently. They do give a theme a nice, futuristic, smooth look. But they can easily be over-done.

Shadows or drop-shadows have started giving themes a nice 3-dimensional affect; giving the feeling that the content is sitting out from the page, drawing your attention to the meat of the blog.

Sliders are also growing in popularity. They offer a nice way to display content and the images that blogs are now starting to rely more and more on

Green is the new black. Or is it pink? Anyway, the green movement is sweeping the globe and WordPress is no exception. Eco themes are coming out everywhere, although this may been seen as greenwashing.

Glowing elements are a popular theme among themes. This is definitely a nice touch, but can destract from both content and other, more subtle, design elements.

WordPress is so immensely popular that even some monster sites and companies are using it to manage their content.  From blogs to portals, these big boys have chosen WordPress.  Can you blame them?

If you like this post, you’ll probably like this one: 20 Reasons WordPress Gives Us Goosebumps

Where are the links? This list will grow so big that there would be too many links on this post to be search engine optimized.

• Google
• New York Times
• Martha Stewart
• Yahoo!
• Playstation
• Southwest Airlines
• Meebo
• Flickr
• Rolling Stone
• CNN
• Smashing Magazine
• TechCrunch
• British Prime Minister
• Ebay
• Digg
• Ford
• The Wall Street Journal
• Sony
• People
• Samsung
• Wired Magazine
• Mozilla
• Network Solutions
• Download.com
• Ben & Jerry’s
• Cpanel
• GE
• Rackspace
• Perez Hilton
• ProBlogger
• Copyblogger
• Mashable
• Engadget
• TMZ
• Huffington Post
• Treehugger
• BoingBoing
• Gizmodo
• A list apart
• I can haz cheeseburger?
• PostSecret
• DailyKos
• Watts up with that?
• Hackland
• And so many more

Sources:

• http://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/21-popular-brands-that-are-using-wordpress/
• http://en.wordpress.com/stats/
• http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/01/15/the-blog-platforms-of-choice-among-the-top-100-blogs/

We Love WP is a blog that has been around a while bringing you original and unique wordpress designs.  What they are not is a source for free or commercial wordpress themes, rather a place for design ideas, creative examples and pleasing designs.  Their own design is one of the first showcase themes we ever saw and makes it easy to browse tons of content without extra clicking.  Check them out and submit your own site!

These are amazing themes, demonstrating the flexibility and options native to WordPress. These are not just pretty themes and they aren’t available for download anywhere. They are examples of custom designs that truly flex their WordPress codex muscle.

Matt Mullenweg's Blog

Get Shopped e-commerce sites

Owltastic Blog by Meagan Fisher

Sproutbox Venture Capital

Hugs for Monsters by Joe Lifrieri