Block Patterns Editors Actually Use
We shipped 34 patterns across three client projects and tracked which ones got inserted. Only nine were used more than twice. Here's what the winners had in common.
Written by
Tomáš Holub
Tomáš Holub
Theme engineer
Tomáš joined the studio in 2017 and owns everything from theme.json architecture to the release pipeline. He maintains the studio's two plugins and runs the accessibility audits.
Reviewed by
Elizabeth Sramek
Elizabeth Sramek
Founder & lead designer
Elizabeth started ThemesCraft in 2012 as a one-person theme shop and has designed every theme the studio has released since. She writes about block themes, typography systems, and the unglamorous work of keeping a fourteen-year-old codebase healthy.
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Pattern libraries are the most over-produced deliverable in WordPress work. We know, because we produced too many.
What got used
- A hero with one heading, one paragraph, one button.
- A two-column text + image row, with the image side switchable.
- A simple stats strip.
- A closing call-to-action.
What didn't get used: anything with more than four editable regions, anything that looked finished, and anything named after a marketing concept rather than a shape.
Name patterns after what they look like, not what you hope they'll be used for.
Make patterns lockable, not locked
Template locking on the wrapper with contentOnly on the children gives editors confidence without trapping them. It's two attributes and it eliminated most of our post-launch support tickets.