Why Building on WordPress’s Twenty Twenty Five Theme with a Child Theme Beats Starting from Scratch

When you’re setting up a new WordPress site, one of the first big decisions is whether to create a custom theme entirely from scratch or to use a pre-existing theme. It goes without saying that when you are using any theme, you should always use a child-theme for customizations.

Building a custom theme is what a lot of developer’s may suggest and this is indeed, better than purchasing a pre-made theme from an online service. But, is a completely custom theme right for your website?

In this article we will look at the benefits of using a pre-existing theme and creating a child-theme instead. Specifically, we will look at using the theme that currently ships with WordPress. As of this date, it is the twenty twenty five theme. If you are looking at using a premium theme or a theme you bought off CodeCanyon, then this article will not apply. However, if you are looking at using a newer WordPress standard theme than twenty twenty-five (if this article is outdated) then this logic will likley still apply. I can say this because I currently have several websites that I built that use the twenty twenty theme (from five years ago) and they still work perfectly.

Using a child theme built on the Twenty Twenty Five theme gives you stability, flexibility, and peace of mind. Here’s why.

The Twenty Twenty Five Theme Is Built to be a part of WordPress for years to come

The Twenty Twenty Five theme, like other default WordPress themes, is designed by the WordPress core team to align with the latest coding practices, performance optimizations, and accessibility standards.

If you go custom, you’ll have to constantly adapt your code to stay in sync with new WordPress releases. With a child theme, however, the parent theme gets updated automatically whenever WordPress evolves, ensuring your site remains compatible without extra effort.

Using the Twenty Twenty Five theme offers Less Maintenance, More Reliability

WordPress introduces new features and deprecates old code on a regular basis. For a fully custom theme, this means:

• You (or your developer) must update the theme code to match WordPress changes.
• Compatibility issues can break layouts or functionality after major updates.

With a child theme based on the Twenty Twenty Five theme, you get the benefit of automatic updates (if you enable them) to the parent theme. WordPress handles the heavy lifting of staying current, while your customizations remain untouched in the child theme.

Using the twenty twenty five theme Provides Faster Development and Lower Costs

When you use the Twenty Twenty Five theme, you will have access to all of the theme’s styles and layouts. You can then change whatever you want to change, within your child theme. Your child themewill be the base for all of your code changes. Using a child theme lets you:

• Reuse Twenty Twenty-Five’s prebuilt templates and styles.
• Override only the parts you need (colours, layouts, functions, branding).
• Launch faster and keep development costs down.

Custom themes require reinventing the wheel for basic features that WordPress already handles well through its default themes.

The Twenty Twenty Five theme is Future-Proof with Full Site Editing

The Twenty Twenty Five theme is fully compatible with Full Site Editing (FSE) and the block editor. This means that site owners can easily adjust layouts, headers, footers, and designs visually. No coding required.

If you built a custom theme from scratch, you’d have to integrate and maintain this compatibility yourself, and you’d need to keep updating it as WordPress continues to improve the block system. If you hire a WordPress developer and they build you a custom theme from scratch, keep this in mind. You will be tied to this developer for years to come as they will need to update the code periodically. The site could also “break” if WordPress changes the core code and you’d be forced to track down your developer, have the site rebuilt or find another developer that can fix it.

The Twenty Twenty Five theme Provides Security and Support from the WordPress Team

Because default themes are maintained by the WordPress core developers, they’re actively monitored and patched for security vulnerabilities. A custom theme, on the other hand, puts that responsibility entirely on you or your developer.

By pairing Twenty Twenty-Five with a child theme, you get:

• Ongoing security updates to the parent theme.
• Guaranteed compatibility with future WordPress versions.
• A large community and plenty of documentation when you need help.

When Does a Custom Theme Make Sense?

There are cases where a custom theme is justified:

• Projects requiring an extremely unique design system.
• Proprietary frameworks for large organizations or agencies.
• Specialized web apps with non-standard WordPress functionality.

But for most businesses, bloggers, and even enterprise sites, a child theme based on Twenty Twenty-Five is the smarter, safer, and more cost-effective choice.