Xenon WordPress Theme

A free WordPress block theme for photographers and small studios. It hangs your projects like prints on a studio wall, and every part of the site stays editable in the Site Editor.

Free to download. No account or email required.

Download Xenon Free View the Live Demo Explore the Designs

Version 0.2.0 · WordPress 7.0+ · PHP 7.4+

This download includes free updates in WordPress. Already using Xenon? Install it once to add the updater. No account or license key is required.

Xenon's Darkroom homepage with the studio name set large, a short statement and the first projects in a mosaic
The Xenon homepage arranged for a phone screen
49 Patterns
Ready in the block inserter
5 Designs
Three dark and two light
13 Templates
5 you can pick per post or page
100% Free
GPL licensed, for any number of sites

Made for Showing Work

A portfolio should open on the pictures. Xenon’s front page sets your studio name as large as the screen allows, puts your newest projects up as an uneven mosaic and lists every project in a ruled index below.

  • Projects are ordinary posts in a work category, tagged by discipline.
  • The front page, archives and work patterns pick up each new project on their own.
  • Activating the theme creates nothing in your database and changes no settings.

Write a post, give it a featured image and a one-line excerpt, and it goes up on the wall.

Xenon's Selected work mosaic, with large and small project pictures captioned by discipline and year
The front page mosaic, shown with demo content.

Choose Your Design

Start with Darkroom, or pick another design under Styles in the Site Editor. Each one changes the palette and the headline, and your content stays where you put it.

Darkroom: a near-black ground, light type and a lavender accent
DarkroomThe default, a dark gallery ground
White Cube: an off-white ground, black type, an indigo accent and a wide headline
White CubeWhite walls and a wide headline
Cyanotype: a deep blue ground, pale type and a sky blue accent
CyanotypeDeep blue, like a blueprint
Safelight: a black ground, warm white type, a red accent and uppercase headings
SafelightA darkroom under a red lamp
Silver: a warm grey ground, near-black type and an oxblood accent
SilverWarm grey, like a silver print
Darkroom with the Regular headline preset, the studio name set at normal width over two lines
Headline PresetsCondensed, Regular, Wide or Poster

The four headline presets work with any design. Each one changes how Archivo, the bundled headline font, sets your headlines, and none of them loads another font file.

A project on Xenon's sticky details template: title, lead and facts beside a tall photograph of a spiral stair
Two project templates: a full-screen cover, or details that stay beside the pictures.

A Project Kit, Included

A case study needs more than a title and a pile of photographs. These 12 patterns give each project page a structure, and the case study layout puts the usual ones together for you.

  • Lead and facts
  • Brief and approach
  • Process
  • Full-bleed image
  • Image pair
  • Offset images
  • Three portraits
  • Gallery
  • Client quote
  • What it came to
  • Credits
  • Next project

Xenon builds every pattern from WordPress core blocks, so your content stays editable if you change themes later. Only the styling follows the new theme.

Edit the Whole Site

You can change the header, the footer and every template in the Site Editor, and build new pages from the included patterns without a page builder.

Keep Fonts on Your Site

Xenon bundles Archivo and Fragment Mono, so both fonts load from your own domain.

Start with Less Code

Xenon’s stylesheets add up to about 22 KB, and block styles load only on pages that use those blocks. The theme ships no JavaScript of its own.

Make It Your Own

  1. Download the theme

    Get the release ZIP directly from GitHub. There’s no checkout or signup.

  2. Install it in WordPress

    Go to Appearance → Themes → Add New → Upload Theme. Choose the ZIP, install it and activate it.

  3. Add your first project

    Write a post in a category with the slug work, tag its discipline and give it a featured image. The front page picks it up on its own.

Before You Install

Xenon is an early release, so it is wise to try it on a staging site with your own content and plugins before you switch a live site.

  • Requires WordPress 7.0 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer.
  • No WooCommerce templates, client proofing galleries or sliders.
  • The Front Page template takes precedence over a static homepage. Edit or delete that template in the Site Editor to use your own page.

The contact patterns show your email address. A booking form needs a form plugin behind the layout.

Put Your Work on the Wall

The complete Xenon portfolio theme is free under GPL-2.0-or-later. Download it, make it yours and use it on as many sites as you need.

Download Xenon Free View the Live Demo Explore the Designs

Version 0.2.0 · A direct ZIP download · No account required

Source code and issue tracker on GitHub