Best Squarespace template
There are probably a million & one different directions that you could take your website using Squarespace. To begin the process, though, you need a solid template to hold it all together. While your website template really depends on what you want to accomplish with your brand or business, I typically stick with one particular family of templates when building out client websites: Brine. If you have no clue what the difference between a template and a template family is, or why it matters, hold tight! I’m going to cover it all in this post.
Do your research:
While choosing a template is one the first things you need to do when starting a Squarespace website, you should NOT jump to conclusions before actually doing your research and testing out different templates. You can change your Squarespace website template at any point in time, but it’s important to note that templates affect the navigation, layout, features and overall style of your site. This means that when changing your website template, you could lose specific features that are embedded within the template you had previously installed.
What is a website template family?
Within Squarespace, you will find a number of website templates, all of which belong to a “template family”. What this essentially means is that the templates in a given family are all built with the same underlying structure and have the same features, while still offering different, distinct styles from one another.
Before going into detail on why I suggest the Brine family of templates, here is a quick and handy little guide of the Squarespace templates and which family each belongs to.
Please note: I did not include website templates that were discontinued from Squarespace as of December, 2018.
Squarespace Template Families:
Adirondack family
Adirondack
Avenue family
Avenue
Aviator family
Aubrey, Aviator
Bedford family
Anya, Bedford, Bryant, Hayden
Brine family
Aria, Basil, Blend, Brine, Burke, Cacao, Clay, Ethan, Fairfield, Feed, Foster, Greenwich, Hatch, Heights, Hunter, Hyde, Impact, Jaunt, Juke, Keene, Kin, Maple, Margot, Marta, Mentor, Mercer, Miller, Mojave, Moksha, Motto, Nueva, Pedro, Polaris, Pursuit, Rally, Rover, Royce, Sofia, Sonny, Sonora, Stella, Thorne, Vow, Wav, West
Farro family
Farro, Haute
Five family
Five
Flatiron family
Flatiron
Forte family
Forte
Galapagos family
Galapagos
Ishimoto family
Ishimoto
Momentum family
Momentum
Montauk family
Julia, Kent, Montauk, Om
Native family
Native
Pacific Family
Charlotte, Fulton, Horizon, Naomi, Pacific
Skye family
Foundry, Indigo, Ready, Skye, Tudor
Supply family
Supply
Tremont family
Camino, Carson, Henson, Tremont
Wells family
Wells
Wexley family
Wexley
York family
Artesia, Flores, Harris, Jasper, Jones, Lange, Shibori, York
So why should you choose Brine for your Squarespace template?
Parallax Scrolling:
The parallax image scrolling feature has increased in popularity recently, and for good reason! This feature adds a sense of depth to your website by allowing your background or banner image to move when you scroll through a website. I use this feature on many of my client websites, and this feature is available throughout the Brine family of templates. You can easily turn this feature off if you don’t care for it, but it’s definitely a nice option to have (as many Squarespace templates don’t offer it).
Index Pages:
Boy, would I be LOST without the ability to create index pages on my website. What are Squarespace index pages, you ask? When you have a scrolling home page, it might be created as one simple site page, or it could be created within a stack of pages that make up an index page. This gives you more flexibility with your website, as you can re-arrange the order of your pages on say, your home page, without having to move all of your elements around. You can also duplicate pages, deactivate them and/or add new sections as needed.
Layering Ability:
The Brine family of templates make it simple to create layered graphics for your website. For example, you can add say, a banner image to an index page, and then go ahead and add any text, graphics, photos, buttons and other elements right on top. Without this feature, you would most likely have to create the entire set in a software such as Photoshop, therefore losing out on SEO opportunities (which is never recommended).
Flexible Customization Options:
One point definitely worth mentioning is the customization options for the Brine family of templates. Because these templates have proven to be so popular recently, Squarespace has continued to develop out advanced features and customization options for the Brine family. While some of these options have already been discussed, it’s worth noting that templates in the Brine family are simply top-notch when it comes to custom features and variations.
Flexible Navigation Menus:
Another reason why the Brine family is one of my favorites- the navigation menu options are extremely customizable. Many of my clients request to have a split navigation menu with the logo placed in the middle. While some templates don’t have this option at all, it is already built right into the Brine family of templates! There are also plenty of options and features with the navigation menus such as adding in social media icons, an announcement bar and more. No custom code knowledge or complicated plugins necessary- hooray!
Have any questions about the Brine template, or Squarespace templates in general? Feel free to drop a comment below, or shoot over an email! I would love to hear from you.