Some clients come to me, telling me they have little expectations for how they wish the web site to look like. Simple colors, simple interface, little number of elements.
Thus, the choice becomes clear – they want a very basic theme for WordPress, a free one.
Then time passes and they start wishing for things. And the things for which they wish tend to get more complicated and expensive to implement.
Also, good made simplicity doesn’t come from not having anything and adding something (so, to start from scratch and put a black line there and there), but from cutting things (eliminate some design elements).
Generally, it proves, it would have been better to start with a premium theme. If not, there is a bigger premium to be paid.