Drupal Themes Recommended by Consultants

Recently the following question was posed on the Drupal consultants mailing list by Sam Cohen:

"I was hoping some of you... can share any theme suggestions, both contributed and commercial, that you think look the most professional."

In the interests of helping others and of promoting the best Drupal themes, here are the themes that got a mention, along with the highlights of the various comments about them:

• Sky
  • "highly recommend"
  • "top of my list"
  • "I love Sky too, but find it a bit heavy on resources"
  • "haven't used... but looks pretty nice."
• LiteJazz
  • "highly recommend"
  • "top of my list"
  • "haven't used... would require too much customization to make [it] look like something else"
  • "...for very quick jobs that need more bock regions that the ambassador themes tend to offer. Doesn't depart very much from 'Welcome to my new Blog!' meme, but it can be useful perhaps for wire-framing."
• Marinelli
  • "I often come back to Marinelli, and its subtheme Alagna. Works great with IE6, which is often a life saver (until we're rid of IE6...) Just retheme its login block, drop in a few nice banners and you've got a versatile theme."
• Amity Island
  • "highly recommend"
  • "haven't used... would require too much customization to make [it] look like something else".
• Multiflex-3
• Pixture Reloaded
• Aquia Slate
• Slash
  • "I think the Slash themes look pretty professional."
• NewsFlash
  • "...for very quick jobs that need more bock regions that the ambassador themes tend to offer. Doesn't depart very much from 'Welcome to my new Blog!' meme, but it can be useful perhaps for wire-framing."
• Acquia Marina
  • "I've been very happy with the fairly-new Acquia Marina (once you change the icons and florescent green. :-))"

The following themes also were mentioned, but are frameworks to build upon rather than being ready to go "out of the box":

• Zen
• Hunchbaque
• Framework

On top of that Sam mentioned converting templates from freeCSStemplates.org into Drupal themes - "well written and easy to convert." Note that the freeCSStemplates.org licence requires a link back from your site.

Do you work in professional Drupal development? Drop us a line in the comments about themes you've personally had success with. Or do you just find it easier to start from scratch?