Magento 2 can power almost anything you throw at it – but whether your store feels fast or feels sluggish often comes down to one thing: the theme.
The theme decides how quickly pages render, how clean the frontend codebase is, and how much time (or money) gets poured into development.
Most stores begin on Luma, the default Magento theme. It’s stable, familiar, and works with almost every extension without friction. But as performance expectations have changed, a new option has entered the conversation: Hyvä – a modern frontend that strips out Magento’s legacy layers and focuses on speed and simplicity.
In many Magento 2 projects today, the decision ends up between staying on Luma or moving to Hyvä. This article walks through both options – so you can make the best decision for your eCommerce store.
Quick Answer: Which Theme Should You Pick?
Simply put, if your priority is speed, clean code, and faster development, then Hyvä wins. It delivers lighter frontend assets, better Core Web Vitals, and a noticeably smoother customer experience. It can be described as giving you the modern Magento frontend most teams wish Luma had.
However, this doesn’t mean Luma is “bad.” It’s stable, widely supported, and works with almost every extension out of the box – which makes it a safe starting point for stores that don’t need to squeeze every millisecond of performance. But optimising Luma for speed takes more time and budget compared to building on Hyvä from the start.
Think of it like this:
Luma is the dependable family car – it gets you from A to B dependably.
Hyvä is the electric upgrade – faster, efficient, and clearly built for where eCommerce is headed.
If performance and development efficiency matter, go Hyvä.
If compatibility and low upfront cost matter more, Luma still has a place.
Meet Luma: Magento’s Built-In “Starter Theme”
Why Most Stores Begin on Luma
Luma is the theme Magento 2 ships with – the default frontend. You install Magento, there it is. It’s useful for demos, proof-of-concepts, and anyone getting their store live without thinking too hard about design. If you need something running quickly so you can focus on products, Luma does the job.
Think of it as the “starter house.” It’s move-in ready, but you know you’ll eventually renovate or move out once the business grows. Luma’s strength is compatibility – almost every extension assumes you’re using it, which reduces problems with compatibility early on.
Where Luma Starts to Slow Down
Where Luma falls short is performance. This is because its frontend is built on older architecture: RequireJS, jQuery, LESS, and layers of scripts glued together from early Magento 2 days.
All of that adds weight to the page – more code to load, more browser work, slower user experience. It wasn’t built with Core Web Vitals in mind, so hitting modern speed benchmarks usually requires paid optimisation work or heavy customisation.
For example: a Luma page loads like it’s assembling itself piece-by-piece in the browser – think building a house brick by brick. Hyvä, on the other hand, loads like it already knew what you wanted – and built it instantly.
Meet Hyvä: The Speed-Focused Modern Frontend
What’s Under the Hood (and Why It’s Fast)
Hyvä is a Magento 2 theme built for speed (and often, the sanity of your devs!). Instead of stacking frameworks on top of more frameworks (looking at you, RequireJS), Hyvä uses Alpine.js and TailwindCSS – two lightweight tools that deliver fast rendering and a clean UI without the bloat.
Fewer dependencies means less code, less complexity, and fewer things that can break – meaning less maintenance time and more time on focusing on your next nice problems!
Hyvä essentially strips Magento’s frontend down to what actually matters. The DOM is cleaner. The CSS is smaller. The browser has less to process. You click into a Hyvä store and the page just… loads – as your customers expect.
Why Teams Rave About Hyvä
Developers love Hyvä because the codebase is simple, so builds are faster and changes don’t require detective work across four JS frameworks. It doesn’t require three months of optimisation or rewrites to hit 90+ lighthouse scores, freeing up your devs to focus on other areas.
For marketers, the benefit is straightforward: speed improves SEO and conversions. A faster store ranks higher and leaks fewer customers during checkout – more sales, and better traffic – the best of both worlds.
Speed Test: Hyvä vs Luma
Lighthouse Scores: The Numbers Don’t Lie
When it comes to speed tests, there is definitely a clear winner.
In tests, stores running Hyvä theme have achieved Lighthouse scores in the 90-100 range when optimised and configured properly.
By contrast, stores using the default Luma theme often score below 70 unless they’re subjected to heavy custom performance work.
The bottom line: Hyvä gives you “top tier numbers” much faster; Luma takes longer, costs more to tune.
How Much Code Your Browser Has to Drag Around
One real-world test showed a standard Luma store sending 200+ JS/CSS resources (~1.5 MB payload) on initial load, whereas a Hyvä build loaded just two assets (~0.2 MB). A huge difference!
What does this mean in simple terms? Hyvä uses less network requests, which means it loads in less time, leading to better user experience (nobody likes a slow website) and higher SEO potential!
Budget, Build Time & Licensing: What to Expect
Hyvä Pricing: Pay a Little Now, Save a Lot Later
Hyvä isn’t free. There’s a one-time license cost – and yes, that’s usually the first thing people react to.
But it’s certainly worth it. After all, what you’re really buying isn’t a theme… it’s time. Hyvä’s clean architecture means developers spend less effort wrestling with frontend complexity and more time actually building the features your store needs. Faster builds = fewer hours = lower overall cost.
If your priority is speed of delivery, cleaner code, and a smoother development process, Hyvä wins here. Instead of paying for optimisation later, you start with a frontend that’s already lean and modern.
Luma Costs: “Free Theme”… Until It Isn’t
Luma costs nothing upfront, and that makes it look like the safe financial choice. It’s compatible with just about every Magento extension, and for stores that only need the basics, that can be enough.
But here’s the catch: once your website starts to expand, and performance becomes a priority, Luma becomes expensive REALLY fast. Achieving modern speed and Core Web Vitals benchmarks usually requires refactoring, workarounds, or add-on optimisation projects. In other words: the “free theme” becomes paid in developer hours.
In essence, Hyvä is paying a little now to avoid paying a lot later.
Extension Support: What Works Out of the Box?
Luma: Maximum Compatibility
Luma works with nearly every Magento extension out of the box. If an extension vendor supports Magento 2, chances are it was designed and tested against the Luma frontend. That makes Luma a safe choice when your store relies heavily on third-party modules or niche functionality.
For eCommerce teams who need plug-and-play compatibility and don’t want to touch frontend logic, Luma keeps things simple.
Hyvä: Catching Up Fast with Extension Support
Hyvä started with less extension support – but that gap is closing fast. Many major Magento vendors now offer dedicated Hyvä compatibility add-ons, and Hyvä itself maintains a component library that replaces common Luma dependencies with lighter Hyvä equivalents.
The shift happening in the ecosystem is clear: more extensions are releasing Hyvä-ready versions every month. If something doesn’t work immediately, agencies can usually convert it because Hyvä’s frontend is cleaner and easier to work with.
However, overall, Luma is still more widely compatible.
SEO & Conversions: Does Theme Choice Affect Sales?
Faster Sites Rank Higher (Thanks Google)
Google doesn’t reward slow websites. It doesn’t care how beautiful your design is or how expensive your tech stack was. If the site drags, rankings drop and users bounce. Hyvä gives you speed by default, which means you start closer to the results you want – faster indexing, stronger Core Web Vitals, and fewer “why is organic traffic dipping?” conversations.
Luma can get there, but only after performance tuning, front-end refactoring, and multiple optimisation passes. With Hyvä, speed isn’t a project. It’s the baseline.
Faster Checkout = More Sales
Users don’t convert on pages they don’t stick around to see. Hyvä reduces the load time and improves user experience – making interactions feel immediate, and checkouts finalise without the “please wait…” moments that give people time to change their mind.
Luma works, too, but it’s bulkier – which means more scripts to load, and more waiting for your potential customers.
A fast store keeps customers in the buying mindset. A slow store gives them time to rethink the purchase.
Should You Switch to Hyvä? Here’s the Rundown
Hyvä is the better choice when you’re upgrading your storefront, or have a larger product range, and want a faster, cleaner frontend without fighting Magento’s legacy code. It gives developers a lighter starting point, so build time drops and performance improves as a side effect – not as an extra project.
Stores that move to Hyvä typically do it because they’re growing as a business, and want to invest in growth, performance, and a frontend they don’t have to wrestle with every time they want to refine UX or add new features.
Luma is the better choice when you aren’t changing much on the frontend and just need everything to work. Almost every Magento extension supports Luma out of the box, which makes it a dependable option for stores that rely heavily on third-party modules or don’t have the appetite for frontend overhaul yet. It’s steady and predictable – which is all many smaller businesses need.
Final Verdict: Which Theme Is Right for Your Store?
After looking at performance, codebase, build efficiency, and extension compatibility, the takeaway is pretty clear: Hyvä is the better frontend for Magento if you’re evolving your store, or if you have a larger store from the get-go. It delivers faster pages, cleaner code, and a smoother development experience. You start from a modern foundation instead of spending time and budget fixing legacy frontend issues.
Luma still earns its place. It’s stable, familiar, and supported by almost every extension. If you’re not planning major frontend changes and you simply need everything to continue working with minimal disruption, staying on Luma is a reasonable choice.
If your store is pushing for growth, performance, and a faster web experience, Hyvä moves you forward without the technical drag. If your priority is stability and leaving things as they are, Luma keeps the lights on.
Either path works – they just lead to very different outcomes.
