You don’t need a complex website to impress visitors. A basic design can be as effective at drawing attention and driving conversions. However, without analyzing a few minimalist website examples, you might struggle to keep things simple on your site.
Fortunately, we’ve done the homework for you. We’ve put together a list of minimalist sites, so you can draw inspiration from real-life examples and organize your pages more effectively.
In this post, we’ll discuss some of the key features of minimalist websites. Then, we’ll look at some of the best examples on the web and discuss what you can learn from them. Let’s get started:
What makes a website “minimalist?”
You’re probably familiar with minimalism. Whether it’s applied to art, interior design, or lifestyle choices, this aesthetic is about keeping things to the bare minimum.
In web design, minimalism refers to sites with clean and simple pages. Typically, minimalist websites only contain the most important elements, like a homepage, an about section, and contact information.
However, there are other common features shared by these basic websites:
- Plain backgrounds with plenty of white space
- A maximum of two fonts and colors
- Short paragraphs
- Shop pages or product catalogs that only contain the essential information
Minimalism can be used in all types of websites, from blogs and professional portfolios to ecommerce sites and online shops. The trick is to avoid using too many elements on the same page.
Of course, this is probably easier said than done. Therefore, it might help to look at some minimalist website examples for inspiration:
15+ minimalist website examples
We’ve rounded up some of the best examples of minimalist websites on the web. Let’s look at each site to see what we can learn from it:
1. Nuvo Magazine
Nuvo is an online magazine with a very clean layout. It uses a white-and-black color scheme and two main font types: serif and sans serif. Furthermore, each post consists of a few paragraphs and a selection of high-quality images. This minimalist design helps the photos stand out against the background.
2. Micah Johnson
Micah Johnson is an excellent example of a minimalist portfolio website. The header is just a blank white space with the artist’s name, their profession, and links to two pages. Moreover, the focus is mainly on the artist’s work, with high-quality photos filling up most of the site.
3. Ignant
IGNANT is a production company that showcases its work in the most basic way possible: a photo gallery of past projects against a white background. As you may notice, this is a common theme among portfolio sites. A bare-bones layout can help put the focus on your work and draw visitors’ eyes.
4. Swear Words
Swear Words is a design studio that specializes in packaging design. Its website uses a very basic layout, with a grey background and a simple menu. Images load as you scroll down the page, and the About and Contact pages open as slider windows. If you want a minimalist but exciting design, you might consider adding these minor animation effects to your site.
5. Kim Dero
Kim Dero is an independent packaging designer. The artist creates colorful and intricate designs, which they showcase on a minimalist site with a white background and neat gallery grid. Since a lot is going on in the images (motifs, vibrant colors, etc.), the simple layout helps to balance things out.
6. Philip House
Let’s look at a different minimalist website example. This time we have Philip House, a chain of luxury condos with a simple yet elegant site. Elements such as quotes and image banners help make the design more interesting. This shows that you can use a variety of features on your site while maintaining a clean layout.
7. Minimalissimo
As the name suggests, Minimalissimo is a brand specializing in minimalist living and design, which is reflected in the website. Every section on the site is presented in a basic table, with black lines and text against a white background. Using tables on your site can help you organize your content more neatly and create a minimalistic aesthetic.
8. Supima
Supima is a company that supplies sustainably grown cotton to clothing brands. While there’s a lot of information on the site, it is presented in neatly defined sections to not overwhelm the reader. The website also contains interactive elements like videos and images. If you’re planning a content-heavy site, you’ll need to make good use of white space and sections to make the content more “digestible.”
9. Pivot Design
Next on our list of minimalist website examples is Pivot Design. This website uses bold text and colors, proving that you can inject a bit of personality into your site without going overboard with its design.
10. Onplace
Onplace is an app that helps you create professional portfolios. It has a one-page website that lists all of the app’s features in a basic layout. The animated photos on the right add interactive elements to the site. The lesson here is that if you’re selling a product, you don’t need a complex website to impress – the focus should be on the features you offer.
11. Foundry
Foundry is an online shop that sells prints. Its product catalog is very straightforward, displaying the product images in a plain grid. As you hover over a photo, you’ll see the name and price of the print. If you want a minimalist shop, you’ll want to avoid displaying too many details on the main shop page and just present them on the product page instead.
12. Studio Nido
Studio Nido is an architect’s portfolio website that showcases the residences they’ve worked on. The site contains multiple photos and very little text. This design choice shows that you don’t need to fill your site with information to generate leads – you can just let the images do the talking! It’s one of the best minimalist website examples of its kind, and a solid choice to draw inspiration from if your “work speaks for itself”.
13. Paravel
Paravel is a web consultancy service that helps businesses improve the User Experience (UX) of their sites. The website is very user-friendly, with a linear layout that guides you through the company’s projects and services. As a web designer or developer, you’ll want your site to be an excellent example of your work with an attractive and intuitive design.
14. Tinker
Let’s look at another example of a minimalist online store. Tinker has a very straightforward shop page, with watches displayed in a uniform grid against a white background. At the top, users can select a size, metal type, and color. Plus, the menu appears in a side window as you click on the hamburger button. This simplicity creates a very streamlined shopping experience.
15. ETQ
ETQ is another online shop with a minimalist design. It has a grey color scheme and uses a simple grid for the product catalog. It also has a filter panel to select a style, size, and other attributes. These options are organized into tables to keep the page clutter-free.
16. Belgravia Group
Belgravia is a real estate agency with a website that relies heavily on visuals. Its pages mainly contain photos of properties and small chunks of text with key details. There’s also an image slideshow on the homepage, which gives this minimalist site a more welcoming feel.
17. Alex Coven
Last on our list of minimalist website examples is the portfolio of Alex Coven. This site’s interactive design prompts users to scroll down and use arrows to navigate the content. The menu opens in a side window and contains a brief bio, a summary of services, and contact details. This way, users can view all essential information in the same place.
How to create a minimalist website
Now that you’ve seen some examples of minimalist websites, you may be wondering how to create your own. As always, we recommend building your site in WordPress. This content management system (CMS) comes with a wide selection of minimalist themes that you can use for free.
👉 For example, Raft is a clean, lightweight WordPress theme that can be used for minimalism-inspired blogs, ecommerce sites, portfolios, and more:
You can choose from different style variations to create a minimalist color scheme. Plus, the theme is block-based, so you can customize it with the WordPress Site Editor, and use the free Otter Blocks plugin to add any extra features you might want.
However, creating a minimalist website is not just about selecting clean layouts. You’ll also need to limit the amount of content and pages on your site. Therefore, you’ll want to consider the information you share with your visitors and only include the most essential and relevant content.
Get inspired by these minimalist website examples
A minimalist site design can help draw attention to the most important information on your page. Plus, it creates a more streamlined layout, which can improve the user experience and lead to more conversions.
In this post, we looked at some minimalist website examples. Portfolio sites tend to minimize the amount of text they use on their pages and prioritize high-quality photos. Meanwhile, online shops like Tinker and Foundry use neat grids and simple filtering options for their product catalogs.
Do you have any questions about creating a minimalist website? Want to share your own minimalist website examples? Let us know in the comments section below!