Best Squarespace templates

At first, finding the best Squarespace templates might sound easy because, unlike WordPress and Wix, Squarespace has so far developed only 110 built-in website themes.

When you start using the platform, however, you’ll notice that although Squarespace offers a fairly limited range of options, all the templates look really good. There’s no “pushover” template here that you could ignore and quickly move on to the rest.

Squarespace’s design team evidently took its time with each template – consequently making the selection process a bit challenging. Then, to make matters worse, the template options don’t include reviews and ratings from past customers. You only get to sort them out based on site purpose or industry category, and that’s it.

Well, if that’s the type of dilemma you’re facing right now, worry no more. We’ve got good news for you. After testing out all the available options, we’ve managed to identify the top 12 best Squarespace templates across the most common use cases – for bloggers, ecommerce, professional services, and creatives.

Before we dive into all the juicy stuff, though, let’s get the basics right…

📚 Table of contents:

Overview of Squarespace templates

For close to two decades now, Squarespace has been more than just a website builder. You can think of it as an all-in-one website platform that offers hosting, unlimited storage and bandwidth, SSL security, mobile optimization, customer support, – and, most importantly – a range of elegant pre-designed website templates.

It’s these templates that you get to customize using Squarespace’s intuitive website builder. The whole process is particularly friendly to beginners, as the templates are quite responsive on Squarespace’s WYSIWYG editor.

On the flip side, however, it turns out that even the best Squarespace templates are not as flexible as, say, WordPress themes. Beginners and non-coders are bound to enjoy working with them – while coders, on the other hand, will find the simplicity here to be a bit limiting.

Now, to help you identify the best Squarespace templates for your site, the platform has placed them into groups. You could, for instance, scroll through Real Estate & Properties, Weddings, Events, Restaurants, Travel, Entertainment, Health & Beauty, or Photography categories.

Squarespace doesn’t stop there, though. It also allows you to pick templates based on your site objective. This is where you get to sort out and identify Squarespace templates for online stores, portfolios, memberships, blogs, and launch pages.

While you’re at it, another thing you’ll appreciate about Squarespace templates is, they’re all free of charge. Yes, that’s right – at least the platform won’t charge you to use its default built-in templates.

Please note, however, that this privilege doesn’t necessarily extend to Squarespace templates that are built by third-party developers. If you choose to acquire a template from an external source, you might be required to pay before downloading it.

That said, let’s sample the three best Squarespace templates for blogging, the three best Squarespace templates for online stores, the three best Squarespace templates for professional service providers, plus the three best Squarespace templates for showcasing portfolios

The best Squarespace templates for bloggers

Farro

Farro for bloggers

First on our list of the best Squarespace templates is Farro, a specially built website theme for those who intend not only to blog, but perhaps sell products as well.

The template, by default, comes with a simplistic but elegant blog layout. You’ll notice that it organizes its blog posts in palettes, which you could customize further based on your preferences.

Farro additionally allows you to dive deep into its advanced options, from where you should be able to create product pages for your readers. This grants you the added privilege of generating and converting leads from your blog audience.

The product page itself can be adjusted to give your customers a seamless experience while shopping. You could, for instance, set them to give your visitors the option of zooming in, or maybe sharing the products with their peers.

Please note, however, that the Farro template doesn’t come with an index page or sidebars. What’s more, it’s impossible to disable its mobile styles – which is actually a good thing when you come to think of it, since it ensures the entire site remains responsive on mobile browsers.

Skye

Skye for bloggers

If you’re looking for a Squarespace blogging template that organizes posts into grid-based blocks, then Skye is certainly worth considering.

This template offers a customizable full-screen design to give your blog readers a smooth user experience. While Farro is a bit more intuitive and graphical, Skye feels more organized and less overwhelming. So much so that even the default menu is collapsed into a button – which pops a side panel when clicked on.

Overall, I’d say this is one of the best Squarespace templates for anyone who’s into food, travel, and lifestyle blogging.

Haute Culture

Haute is one of the best Squarespace templates

Haute Culture is yet another Squarespace blogging template that heavily prioritizes images. On the homepage, the blog posts are arranged in a mosaic-style layout, with the cover images appearing prominently behind the blog titles. So, all things considered, this is a great template for wooing audiences using captivating blog images.

When you click on the blog posts, they open to reveal content pages that are heavily laden with images. Instead of displaying related posts in thumbnails, it uses full-size images that are bound to leave a lasting impression on your readers.

The navigation system itself is pretty seamless, as visitors can scroll infinitely across the homepage posts. Then, if you happen to be running a blog with multiple contributors, you’ll appreciate the fact that Haute Culture showcases authors. profile images and bio below their articles.

That said, it also turns out that Haute Culture’s biggest advantage could, in some way, be its biggest weakness. You see, the image-first approach here makes it difficult to find a good blog title font color that works well with all the images.

The best Squarespace templates for ecommerce

Galapagos

Galapagos for eCommerce sites

When it comes to selling stuff on Squarespace, Galapagos is one of the few templates that are perfectly suited for the job. You can count on it to help you set up an online store with a minimalistic, grid-based layout. It’s quite simple, so your customers are bound to have an easy time exploring the products as soon as they land on your homepage.

Then to help you convert and sell, the template makes your online store fully interactive with features such as special on-hover effects, image zoom, and product quick view.

Galapagos is also capable of integrating all the core ecommerce features. It can, for instance, work well with a range of secure payment processors, as well as Squarespace’s dynamic shopping cart system.

It doesn’t only focus on product pages, though. Galapagos can also run various types of landing pages, photo galleries, and list-style blogs.

Hester

Hester is one of the best Squarespace templates for eCommerce

If you’re the type of seller who prefers to use a few “favorite” products to rally leads, then you might want to consider setting up the Hester theme.

From its homepage alone, you’ll notice that this Squarespace template was built to make your favorite products pop. It greets your visitors with a modern but minimalistic display of selected products, plus a “Shop Now” CTA button that subsequently ushers them into your product page.

Customers or subscribers can also log into their accounts from the homepage, as well as navigate to the “About Us” or “Blog” sections of the site. And speaking of which, this Hester template further provides a pretty neat blogging function, which integrates with Squarespace’s CMS to help you build your online store’s SEO.

Brine

Brine template

Closely related to Hester is Brine, which also showcases a few highlighted products on the homepage, accompanied by a CTA. It’s developed specifically for online stores that need a favorable balance of images and text, advanced ecommerce capabilities, colorful landing pages, and basic, straightforward CTAs.

As soon as you launch it, this template will reveal a wide range of customizable intuitive elements. You could, for example, play around with its full-width headers and banners, custom share buttons, multiple blog layouts, multiple navigation areas, content inset feature, and the parallax-scrolling index page.

Your customers would be very much delighted to work with such a website.

The best Squarespace templates for professional services

Almar

Almar one of the best Squarespace templates for professionals

On the professional services front, Almar takes the lead as one of the best Squarespace templates, thanks to its executive design. This is one template that is built to provide all the basic stuff you’d want from a professional service website.

You can, for instance, use it to set up a blog, a newsletter sign-up system, an “About” page, as well as an appointment-booking function. What’s more, you get to showcase testimonials and awards as social proof to potential clients, plus provide memberships directly through the site.

You’ll find all these features and sections neatly organized throughout the site, and you should be able to customize them based on your professional needs. The layout here, in particular, is elegantly simple but bold – with full-size image headers accompanied by eye-catching text snippets. You even get a stylish logo banner on the homepage, so you can exhibit notable brands that you’ve worked with in the past.

Ready

Ready is among the best Squarespace templates for professionals

While Almar heavily relies on bold image banners, the Ready template focuses more on detailing your company and services through descriptive text. It helps you convince prospective clients by providing information about your practice, what your firm is all about, and how clients stand to benefit from your services.

As such, you could say that Ready is particularly ideal for consulting firms and freelance professionals. It even comes with a host of relevant web pages such as Contact Us, Schedule Appointment, Testimonials, News & Notes, FAQ, Pricing & Services, plus About Us.

All these sections can, of course, be customized based on your overall objectives. You could, for example, direct your clients to schedule appointments through Ready’s CTA buttons. It’ll then work closely with Squarespace’s built-in scheduling system to apply the bookings accordingly.

Your site visitors, on the other hand, should have an easy time navigating the site, as Ready comes with a very minimalistic layout that’s adequately responsive on all types of devices.

Sofia Rey

Sofia Rey for Squarespace professional services websites

Although Ready is a pretty solid template for freelance professionals, it’s Sofia Rey that takes the crown in this category. Its features are well-tailored to the needs of freelancers who work alone.

You see, while other Squarespace templates come with all sorts of extra features and sections that freelancers might not need, Sofia Rey chooses to keep everything simple. It provides just the essentials – a section for introducing yourself, a services and pricing area, a brief testimonials section, a contact form, plus links to your social media pages.

Most importantly, it features a resume section where you could post your qualifications, education, skills, experience, and accomplishments. If you like, you could even throw in references, plus maybe a download button in case potential clients would like to get your resume and keep it on file.

The best Squarespace templates for creatives/portfolios

Sofia Pazari

Pazari is a creative template for Squarespace portfolios

If your creative projects can be classified into different categories, Sofia Pazari would be an ideal template for your Squarespace website.

The homepage here doesn’t overwhelm you with menu options. It, instead, goes straight to the point by showcasing various portfolio categories in large, captivating cover images – which are neatly arranged in a simple and clean layout.

A photographer, for example, might set up well-labeled cover images for landscape projects, interiors, people, etc – depending on the types of shots they’ve taken. Website visitors, on the other hand, just need to click on the cover images to access all the projects in the respective categories.

Once you open the project pages, you’ll be pleased that Sofia Pazari doesn’t restrict itself to image thumbnails. It showcases the projects in large-scale images that take up the entire width of your screen.

What’s more, the default layout doesn’t feature image descriptions or titles. But, you can go ahead and include them if you like.

Carson

Carson is a solid Squarespace template for portfolios

Unlike Sofia Pazari, Carson doesn’t just hit you with project clips right out of the gate. Web visitors first land on a static homepage, and then choose from the popup menu what they’d like to see.

Now, to be specific, the default menu options here are Work, Clients, plus Info & Contact. And as you’ve probably figured out already, it’s in the Work area where you get to showcase your project clips in their respective categories.

That said, one thing you’ll like about Carson is its very interactive layout. When you hover your mouse pointer over a portfolio category, for instance, the background image changes. Then when you click on any of the options, the portfolio page opens to reveal large-scale full-bleed imagery, complete with intuitive overlay effects.

And that’s not all. Carson further allows you to experiment with slideshows and various layout scrolling options. You could also customize your fonts, overlay effects, and image features until you find a perfect balance for your target audience.

Whichever way you choose to customize your Carson template, you can bet the corresponding mobile version will adjust itself accordingly.

Wexley

Wexley for Squarespace websites

For creatives who’d like to showcase their projects in an interactive mosaic layout, Wexley provides just the perfect setting. Its homepage is built to act as a portfolio landing page that flaunts your work in high-quality images of different sizes, arranged in a fancy mosaic grid.

The images are optimized to show their labels when a mouse pointer hovers. Visitors can also click on the images to open high quality slideshow overlays. Pretty simple and straightforward.

Furthermore, it’s worth noting that Wexley doesn’t limit itself to image portfolios. It also comes with a blog section, which is quite an asset that artists could leverage for SEO and audience engagement. Additionally, the template allows you to set up a products page for your creations, an events calendar, and a playable album page that features your works.

Conclusion – choosing the best Squarespace templates

Going by the template options we’ve sampled, it’s evident that Squarespace means business! Its design team continues to churn out elegantly designed modern themes that are well-adapted to various use cases. And the best thing is, all these template options are included in your main Squarespace subscription fee.

Now, to choose the best Squarespace templates, you might want to take into consideration the type of website you’re building, your future growth plan, the caliber and needs of your target audience, your web design skills, as well as the overall business structure and setup. You could even test out different options until you find the perfect one for your site.

All in all, whatever you choose to settle for, ensure that it’s not only flexible, but also simple, user-friendly, and adequately responsive. A template could make all the difference between a successful website and an average one!

If you have any questions about the best Squarespace templates featured on this list (or have any of your own to suggest), feel free to add your comment below.

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