Parallax scrolling has become a popular design trend, providing a visually engaging experience that adds depth and movement to websites. If you’re looking to create a modern, dynamic website, choosing a WordPress theme with parallax features can help you achieve that. Parallax themes use background images or elements that move at different speeds as users scroll, creating a sense of immersion and interactivity.
Wikipedia tells us about the origin of the word:
The term is derived from the Greek παράλλαξις (parallaxis), meaning “alteration.”
In this guide, we’ve compiled a list of the best parallax WordPress themes, each offering stunning visuals, smooth scrolling effects, and customizable options. Whether you’re building a portfolio, business site, or blog, these themes will help you create a captivating, user-friendly website that stands out.
Parallax
Parallax is a versatile WordPress theme that merges two modern design trends: parallax scrolling and single-page layouts. This theme is designed to help users create visually stunning websites with ease, offering responsive layouts that showcase content in beautiful parallax sections. Visitors will enjoy smooth scrolling through your site; fly-in elements add extra interactivity.
The theme can be used for single-page or multi-page sites, with full customization options for each page. Parallax includes over 60 pre-designed layouts and gives you the flexibility to design with drag-and-drop functionality using Themify’s Builder. You can select from 11 header/page styles, customize headers with images or sliders, and use features like image filters, animated progress bars, and portfolio and team post types to create a fully personalized experience. The theme is also responsive and retina-ready, ensuring your site looks great across all devices.
Slide One
Slide One is a highly engaging one-page WordPress theme with a visually stunning online presence, a Super Cool Parallax background, and AJAX post-loading. Designed for ease of use, the theme allows individual customization of logos, backgrounds, menu colors, and social icon colors for each page. Slide One also supports translation with its built-in translator or your own .mo files for localization.
The theme provides extensive customization options through its user-friendly admin panel, offering over 350 fonts and a Cufon uploader for custom fonts. Additionally, Page Builder simplifies page management, making it easy to organize content. SEO features include proper use of heading tags (H1, H2, H3) and support for image alt tags, helping to improve search engine optimization.
MINIMUM
MINIMUM is a highly versatile and professional WordPress theme for modern businesses and creatives. It offers a sleek, minimalist design and is powered by a robust feature set. The theme allows you to choose between three fluid AJAX animations or turn AJAX off for a more traditional experience. With its parallax pages, you can create visually captivating presentations or microsites, perfect for showcasing projects or creating unique homepages.
MINIMUM has features like the Slider Revolution plugin, WooCommerce integration, and an intuitive admin interface for easy customization. Add unlimited sliders, parallax sections, and portfolio images to create dynamic, engaging layouts. The theme offers multiple customization options with 500+ Google Fonts, unlimited colors, and flexible layouts to suit any brand’s needs.
Scroller
Scroller is a versatile WordPress theme featuring a full-screen slideshow paired with a modular, row-based layout. This combination creates a visually striking design ideal for creatives, photographers, businesses, or product showcases. Its clean, modern aesthetic ensures your content takes center stage, while the flexible layout allows for easy customization to suit various purposes.
Lobo
Lobo is a modular, modern, and responsive WordPress theme designed with creatives in mind. Its clean and stylish design makes it an excellent choice for designers, developers, and agencies. The theme supports Retina displays for high-quality visuals and includes an extensive theme options panel for easy customization. Lobo stands out with its responsive-friendly side menus and a unique tiled layout, offering a sleek, contemporary look while maintaining excellent usability across all devices.
North
North is a 100% responsive, parallax one-page WordPress theme designed for creative agencies and studios. Built on the Twitter Bootstrap 3.2 Framework, It offers a clean, professional look with plenty of customization options. With the Visual Composer plugin and a powerful Theme Options Panel, you can easily tailor the theme to fit your needs without coding knowledge.
Key features include Revolution and Layer Slider integration, WooCommerce support for eCommerce, and Isotope Portfolio for filterable, dynamic galleries. The theme also provides 12 layout versions, including light, dark, and night styles, and full-screen super slides for a visually striking design. North ensures a smooth user experience with parallax scrolling, responsive design, and compatibility across all major browsers, making it ideal for modern, creative websites.
Nonus
Nonus is a stylish flat-design WordPress theme that combines modern layouts with smooth parallax effects for a dynamic user experience. It features both Nivo and FlexSlider for showcasing images and content, along with options for full-width or boxed layouts to fit different design preferences. Whether you need a one-page website or prefer a multi-page setup, Nonus offers flexibility, making it a great choice for businesses, agencies, or creative professionals.
Epicurean Theme
zolothemes
July 30, 2014 at 4:50 amOne more Highly customizable parallax themes- http://www.zolothemes.com/themes/z-1-minimal-clean-and-minimal-one-page-parallax-theme
Ashish Ajani
October 3, 2014 at 10:31 pmNice article Evan and I am completely agree that designers have adopted a variety of parallax effects to bring motion and depth to designs, list you provided is very helpful in getting some inspiration on how to use parallax for good effect. Great stuff.
Rusha
November 24, 2014 at 4:47 amNice Collection!
Here are some other Free Parallax WordPres Themes:
http://accesspressthemes.com/accesspress-ray/
http://accesspressthemes.com/accesspress-parallax/
Beypin
March 10, 2015 at 11:54 pmI Like your site Share after the image on the top can to please name the plugin ?
Evan Scoboria
March 11, 2015 at 9:26 amHi Beypin, \n\nI’m glad you like it. The social share buttons on the Nimbus Magazine are custom and not from a plugin but they are very similar to ones on several of our themes.
Alexandra
August 9, 2016 at 6:12 amHello Evan! Thank you for including Zerif Pro and RokoPhoto into your article. Also, you could have a look at another theme our ours, called Parallax One: https://themeisle.com/themes/parallax-one/.
Thank you!
Best regards,
Alexandra
Sarah Bishop
September 6, 2016 at 9:30 pmHi Alexandra,
We are happy to share your themes with our readers. You produce quality themes over there, and that being said Parallax One is another example of that.