Yesterday, we talked about what minimalistic blog themes are, and how beneficial they can be. Today, we’ll look at their downsides - obvious as they may be to most bloggers.

1. They Just Aren’t Sexy
   It’s very, very rare that a minimalistic blog theme comes out looking great, especially after bloggers dump all the usual “sidebar” stuff (or what Nick Wilson calls digital magpies) onto their themes, e.g. My PageRank, My Blog Is Worth…, etc. Of course, this doesn’t mean there are no good minimalistic themes out there. The original Zen Minimalist and Hemingway Reloaded (a Hemingway mod) themes look simple, yet undeniably elegant.
2. People Just Love Images and Colours
   Even if a minimalistic theme comes out great, most blog readers need their daily fill of images and colours. Monochrome schemes tend to “feel” just a bit dead, so it’s not really surprising that most blog readers tend not to like them. This feeling is pretty much echoed by most theme designers as well. That’s one reason why you’ll see most blog themes having huge and colourful header images.
3. Ads: Hey I’m Here!
   In a minimalistic blog theme, anything colourful stands out. While that may sometimes be the aim for bloggers (or more likely, advertisers) implementing image ads, such ads can stand out a little too much in a minimalistic theme. And since image ads tend to be sold on a CPM basis, you might not want them to be distracting your audience too much.
4. You Didn’t Try Hard Enough
   There is also the misconception that most imageless and monochrome themes are the result of sheer laziness or lack of inspiration, i.e. black, white and grey tend to go well together, so no need to figure out a good colour scheme, or nice pictures are hard to find, so why not just go without one? I’m not saying that most people think that way, but I’m quite sure many web denizens do.

Darn, I knew I should have stopped with the advantages of minimalistic themes. Now I’m just so tempted to start a redesign of this blog. Sheesh.

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