Fernlight is a calm, editorial full-site-editing block theme for writers and slow-living blogs. Everything it ships with, on one page — see it live on the demo.
Fernlight began as a house theme for an editorial blog, then was rebuilt as a clean, generic, reusable theme for anyone who wants calm defaults and full control. It's opinionated about calm and agnostic about everything else.
Get Fernlight (beta)
The theme is in the WordPress.org review queue. Grab the beta now — we’ll email you when it lands in the directory.
Free & GPL-licensed. We’ll email you launch updates — no spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Reading & typography
- Cormorant Garamond (display) + DM Sans (UI/body), self-hosted WOFF2, on a measured reading column.
- Six one-click editorial block styles: Lede, Deck, Kicker, Baseline, Display, Compact.
- Documented reading/editorial measures, baseline rhythm, and a 7-step fluid type scale.
Style variations — eight looks
Default (slate-blue), Sage, Ink, Warm Sand, Clay, Sky, Dusk, and a true Dark. Switch in the Site Editor; because everything is built on semantic color roles, changing one palette value re-skins the whole site. Automatic dark mode follows the reader's system setting and is enabled by default on fresh installs.
Patterns — 50+ across six groups
- Heroes & headers (6) · Editorial sections (13) · Post building blocks (13)
- Newsletter & calls to action (3) · Post lists & archives (10) · Full-page layouts (7)
Drop a pattern in and replace the words. See them live on the demo →
Full-site editing
Header, footer, every template (index, single, page, home, archive, search, 404), colors, and fonts are editable in the Site Editor. Centered and Minimal header/footer variations plus an FSE-native desktop mega-menu. No page builder, no lock-in, no shortcodes.
Performance & accessibility
- Zero front-end JavaScript; conditional CSS with an always-loaded base under 10 KB; self-hosted, preloaded fonts.
- WCAG 2.2 AA contrast across every variation, a proper skip link, strengthened focus states, single landmarks.
- Reduced-motion-aware View Transitions, a reading-first print stylesheet, and styled RSS/Atom feeds.
AI-native & headless
A plain-English design-intent contract in theme.json, the native WordPress Abilities API (list-patterns, compose-page, get-performance-report on 6.9+ with Companion), and read-only REST endpoints (/patterns, /tokens, /type, /capabilities, /perf) — so assistants and headless front-ends can build on-brand pages.
Fernlight Child
Companion generates a Fernlight child theme on demand (Appearance › Fernlight › Settings), stamped with your current parent version, for custom CSS or template overrides that survive parent updates — no separate download to track.
Requirements
WordPress 6.7+ (Abilities API on 6.9+), PHP 8.0+, GPL-2.0-or-later, translation-ready with a bundled POT, full RTL, and Polylang / WPML compatibility.