Something I remember from Web 1.0 was background images that just looked like wallpaper

Like, pastel or beige or other mild colors with unobtrusive repeating elements

Which seems weird now why insert ANY such obnoxiousness vs. white backgrounds but back then a well-tiled 4-8Kb gif* could make your whole page colorful while style sheets hadn’t been invented yet and colorful spot illustrations could take upwards of a minute to load

*back then gifs weren’t synonymous with animation, known more for reduced color palettes (and thus file sizes) vs. jpegs