What Are The Most Downloaded Themes?

While searching the blogosphere for great themes to put on my best WordPress themes post , I happened to run across a a post that was published back in March which highlights the 49 most downloaded WordPress themes of all time.  These 49 themes have been downloaded a large number of times, ranging from 47,000+ downloads to 6,500+ downloads.

While it is important to note that a lot of great themes have been released in the 6 months since the post was written, I mention the post because I think that by looking over the themes on the list you can gather a bunch of information and see a few trends emerge:

1. 2-Column Themes – A majority of the themes use 2-columns.  Without manually counting, I would guess at least 80% of the themes are 2-column themes.
2. White Backgrounds – It appears people want white backgrounds in the content area.   This is probably because it makes it easier to add icons and stuff to the blog if you aren’t using transparent .gif images.
3. Split Sidebars on 3-Column Themes – Of the 3-column themes included, most of them have the content in the middle and a sidebar on both the left and right sides.

If you are a theme author that wants their themes to get used, I would recommend offering a 2-column theme with white backgrounds.