You bring up an interesting point... something that I've been looking at at our site as well: how much do these decorations contribute to the overall experience

You bring up an interesting point... something that I've been looking at at our site as well: how much do these decorations contribute to the overall experience of the website? I don't think there's a clear answer to this but several issues come to mind. If you're running a sales site that has few products, I think it's advantageous to have a really attractive home page that's image heavy. However, if you're running a site that has a lot of textual information, I think all these ornaments are too distracting. I find it extremely distracting when I'm reading something that's set against a background of which every pixel is shaded. I think you should stick to CSS effects and pay close attention to typography and worry less about shading every pixel on the page. One thing that's exempt is the header. You can go crazy at the top of the page but I'd leave the rest of the page as minimal as possible.