Lumina template
A Joomla template built for Solidres, not adapted to it
Lumina is our first template with no template framework underneath it — no page builder, no companion plugin, no SCSS. Just a fast, photography-led hospitality site that your booking flow drops straight into.
Five presets. Real dark mode. Two quickstarts that install a finished site rather than an empty one.
HOW TO GET LUMINABuilt for one beautiful hotel — or a portal full of them
Every Solidres template we have shipped so far is built on Helix Ultimate. That was a reasonable decision at the time, and it came with a bill: a template that cannot render without its companion system plugin, a page grid stored as a drag-and-drop JSON blob, SCSS compiled on every request, and a header, nav and footer whose markup lives inside the plugin rather than in the template you can open.
Lumina is written from nothing. It is aimed at boutique and independent properties — one hotel, or a small collection — and built around the one journey that matters on a hospitality site: search, choose a room, book. The booking portal quickstart takes the same template up to twenty properties.
| Latest version: | 1.0.0 Stable |
| Released on: | Sep 2026 |
| Compatibility: | Joomla 6, PHP 8.4 |
| Requires: | Solidres 4.3.0 or newer |
| Framework: | None — no page builder |
Included
with Bundle, Hub and Developer subscriptions
What makes Lumina different
Your booking flow, untouched
This is the part we thought hardest about. Solidres binds its booking behaviour to delegated event handlers on the #solidres wrapper, so a template that forks those views is one refactor away from breaking silently.
Lumina almost never forks them. The room-type page is the single Solidres view with an override, and it is there only to add HotelRoom structured data. The property page, availability search, room selection, the checkout steps, the confirmation screen and the guest account are restyled entirely through CSS scoped to #solidres. Your booking flow keeps working exactly as it does today, and a future Solidres release cannot pull the rug out from under a layout fork that does not exist.
A template you can actually read
Lumina has no companion plugin. The page shell is one index.php you can open and understand: semantic HTML5 landmarks, module positions where you would expect them, and CSS custom properties written out from the template parameters. There is no SCSS to compile, because there is no SCSS — the styles are plain CSS with custom properties, and the whole template runs on a single JavaScript file under 5 KB minified.
It also does not re-bundle what Joomla already gives you. Lumina ships no jQuery, no Bootstrap copy and no Font Awesome set of its own — it builds on the ones your Joomla install already loads, shared with every other extension on the site, instead of shipping a second copy of each for the browser to download.
Nothing to download before the page paints
Lumina ships no font files at all. The type stack asks for Cormorant Garamond and Inter if the visitor already has them, and falls back to Georgia and the system sans if not — nothing to fetch, nothing to shift while it loads. If you want a specific webfont served from your own domain, self-hosting it is a documented step rather than a fight with a framework.
The same goes for your modules. Lumina exposes 33 module positions and deliberately keeps the names the Helix-based Solidres templates used — booking, slideshow, map, sidebar-a, sidebar-b, top-a to top-d, bottom-a to bottom-d, footer, toolbar-a to toolbar-c. Your existing module assignments come across instead of needing to be rebuilt.
Five presets, one template
A hotel in Santorini and a townhouse hotel in Edinburgh should not look like the same website. Lumina ships five presets — each a complete colour, contrast and mood change, not a hue slider. They carry the heading typeface with them, and Minimal goes further still, tightening the corner radii and softening the shadows so the whole page sits differently:
- Coastal — light, airy, sand and sea
- Heritage — rich and classic, with brass accents
- Urban — moody contemporary, for the city boutique
- Retreat — earthy and natural, for wellness and the countryside
- Minimal — monochrome and type-led
Two of them are running live, on the same template: Coastal on the hotel demo, Urban on the booking portal demo. The dark-mode toggle sits in the header of both.
Dark mode is a mode, not a filter
Every colour in Lumina is a token, redefined for dark rather than inverted or filtered — so photography stays photography and your brand colour stays your brand colour. You choose how it behaves: follow the visitor's system setting, force light, force dark, or give the visitor a toggle in the header. The theme is set before the page paints, so there is no flash of the wrong one, and a visitor's choice is remembered.
It reaches the parts templates usually miss, too: Bootstrap's own modals, dropdowns and tables follow the theme because Lumina points their variables at its tokens, and the date picker in your booking form switches with it. We audited roughly 37 pages across both themes, on desktop and on a phone, and fixed the contrast failures we found rather than shipping them.
Everything you would want to change, without touching CSS
Sixteen parameters across three tabs. Brand carries your logo, a separate dark-mode logo, the site title and the tagline. Style holds the preset, custom primary and accent colours, a heading and body font choice, three header styles (transparent over the hero, solid, or centred), three container widths and three hero heights. Features covers the dark-mode behaviour, the sticky booking bar and the back-to-top button.
No page builder to learn, and no JSON blob standing between you and your layout.
On a phone, which is where your guests are
The layout is designed narrow-first rather than shrunk down to fit. The search bar stacks instead of scrolling sideways, the booking summary opens as a full-screen overlay that follows your theme, and the navigation becomes a drawer that traps focus properly — verified by keyboard at 390 px, and again at 400% zoom.
Two quickstarts: a finished site, not an empty one
A template on its own is a blank page with good manners. So Lumina ships with two quickstart packages — complete Joomla installs, with real photography, real content and the whole menu structure already built. Change the name, swap the photos, and you have a working booking site rather than a starting point.
The boutique hotel
One property, set up the way a small hotel actually wants it: Joomla's home page is the property page, so a visitor lands on the hero, the booking bar and the room types with no click in between. Rooms & Suites with a page per room type, add-ons, offers, five categories of tours with a booking tracker, a three-post journal, about and contact pages, the guest area and the footer policies. Coastal preset, transparent header, tall hero. 56 pages. Click through the hotel demo.
The booking portal
Twenty independent properties across sixteen cities, four partner accounts, subscription levels with commission rates, and ten tours — an OTA-style landing page with a search box over the hero, then bands for trending destinations, property types, featured stays, deals, themes, things to do, guest reviews and a list your property pitch. Search results are two columns with the filter stack on the left. Urban preset, solid header. 80 pages. Click through the portal demo.
NOTE Both quickstarts are built from the same package directory as the template itself, so they cannot drift from the release, and both are installed and crawled end to end before they ship — every page returning 200, with exactly one h1 and a meta description on each.
What you get
- The Lumina template for Joomla 6 — no framework, no companion plugin
- Five presets, switchable from a dropdown
- Dark mode, with four behaviours to choose from
- Sixteen template parameters across Brand, Style and Features
- 33 module positions, named as the Helix-based templates named them
- Interface strings in 25 languages
- Two quickstart packages — a boutique hotel and a booking portal
- Real photography and content in both, ready to replace
- HotelRoom structured data on room type pages
- Child template support — your changes survive an update
- Updates through Joomla's own updater
- Unlimited support tickets while your subscription is active
- 100% open source — no encoding, every line there to read and change
Accessibility and search, stated honestly
Lumina is built with a skip link, real landmark elements, aria-expanded and aria-controls on the navigation, a labelled theme toggle, visible focus states, a navigation drawer that genuinely traps focus, and a heading outline that does not skip levels. A visitor who has asked their system for reduced motion gets it. The room-type page emits HotelRoom structured data, and every page in both quickstarts carries a single h1, a meta description and no broken images — we crawl for it before the quickstarts ship.
How to get Lumina
Lumina is not a separate purchase. It is included with the Solidres subscription levels that carry our other templates — Bundle, Hub and Developer — so if you are already on one of those, it is waiting in your account downloads today. Single covers the booking extension and its premium plugins, but not the templates.
Subscribe to Solidres and Lumina comes with it
Bundle, Hub and Developer each include Lumina, both of its quickstarts and every other Solidres template, alongside the premium plugins and support. Every level is a one-time purchase with optional renewal — your site keeps running whether or not you renew; renewing is what keeps updates and support coming.
SEE PLANS AND PRICINGIMPORTANT Lumina is a separate download. It is not part of the Solidres core package, so updating Solidres will not put it on your site — download it from your solidres.com account and install it like any Joomla template. After that it updates itself through Joomla's own updater.
What you need
REQUIREMENTS:
- A Joomla 6 site on PHP 8.4
- Solidres 4.3.0 or newer
- A Bundle, Hub or Developer subscription — Single does not include the templates
- Nothing else. No framework plugin, no page builder, no separate theme engine
- Good photography. Lumina is a photography-led design and it will show you, unkindly, if you do not have any
Frequently asked questions
1. Is Lumina a separate purchase?
No. It is included with the Bundle, Hub and Developer subscriptions, at no extra cost, the same as our other templates. There is no standalone Lumina licence to buy.
2. I am on Joomla Single. Do I get it?
No — Single covers the booking extension and its premium plugins, not the templates. Upgrading to Bundle is what adds Lumina and the rest of them; as an active subscriber you get the loyalty discount when you do.
3. Will Lumina arrive with my next Solidres update?
No. Lumina is a separate download and is not part of the Solidres core package. Take it from your account downloads and install it as a Joomla template. From then on Joomla's own updater keeps it current.
4. Do I need a framework or a page builder?
No, and that is rather the point. There is no companion system plugin, no page builder and no SCSS compiler. Install the template, pick a preset, point it at your logo.
5. I already have a Solidres site on Emerald, Greenery or Infinity. How much work is switching?
Less than you would expect for the modules: Lumina keeps the same position names those templates use, so your existing module assignments come across rather than needing to be rebuilt. What does need a look is anything that relied on Helix Ultimate itself — its layout builder, its custom fields, its own modules — because none of that exists here. Try it on a copy of your site first.
6. Will it break my booking flow?
It should not. Lumina overrides exactly one Solidres view — the room-type page, and only to add structured data. Everything else in the booking funnel is restyled with CSS, not forked, so it behaves as Solidres ships it.
7. Can I use my own colours?
Partly, today. The custom primary and accent colours work on the Coastal preset; on the other four presets they are currently ignored, and link colour does not follow the preset yet. This is the first thing on the list for the next release. If exact brand colours matter to you right now, either choose Coastal or plan on a few lines of custom CSS.
8. Does it support right-to-left languages?
Not yet. The interface strings ship in 25 languages, but the RTL stylesheet is still to come — so if your site is in Arabic, Hebrew or Farsi, wait for a later release rather than installing this one.
9. What are the quickstarts, exactly?
Complete Joomla installations — Joomla, Solidres, Lumina, sample properties, photography, menus and content, all in one package. You install one instead of installing Joomla, so they are for new sites, not for adding to an existing one. There are two: a boutique hotel and a multi-property booking portal.
10. Can I use a quickstart on a site I already have?
No — a quickstart is a fresh Joomla install and would replace what is there. On an existing site, install the template on its own and assign your modules to its positions.
11. Is there a demo I can click around?
Yes — both quickstarts are up: the boutique hotel and the booking portal. Search real dates, open a room, work through the booking steps, switch the theme in the header — it is the same package you install, not a mockup. Every screenshot on this page is that same quickstart, nothing staged, and the launch post walks through more of it.
12. Is it open source? Can I customise it?
Yes to both. GPL, no encoding, every line there for you to read and change — like the rest of Solidres. If you want to change the header, the file is right there in the template rather than hidden inside a plugin. Lumina is also inheritable, so you can create a Joomla child template and keep your changes through updates instead of re-applying them each time.
13. How many support tickets can I open?
Unlimited, while your subscription is active. We do not meter questions.
14. I do not have a PayPal account. How can I pay?
PayPal lets you pay by credit card without a PayPal account. On the PayPal checkout page, use the "Don't have a PayPal account" option and enter your card details there. Creating an account is offered but not required.
We accept
Next steps
See it running first
Both quickstarts are live to click through — search real dates and take a booking all the way to the confirmation screen.
Hotel demo Booking portal demoNew to Solidres?
Solidres is the open-source booking engine Lumina is built around. Try the free edition to see whether it fits your property — then subscribe to Bundle, Hub or Developer, which is what brings Lumina, the other templates, the premium plugins and support.
Check out Solidres for JoomlaWant the longer story?
The launch post covers why we stopped building on Helix Ultimate, what a no-framework template buys you, and where Lumina goes next.
Read the launch post