Wide-ranging wallpaper wonders

What was it about people, 30 years ago, that made them pick such a "variety" of then-attractive wallpaper, all in the same portion of the color spectrum?

Here is the delightful stuff in the kitchen, with bonus dirt from 30 years of pictures in the same place (the bunny is ours, for temporary contrast).


Here is the smallest upstairs bedroom, with matching curtains and water stains.


This is our room in all its bamboo glory. That paper may be even older and we don't hate quite as much since it's sort of arts-and-craftsy and the picture molding helps.


Our favorite in the heinous race is the stunning front hall disco effect stuff. At least it's not foil, too.

All unpapered walls are either white or beige and from what we can tell around the edges of doors and windows, always have been.
We are planning to come up with some nice schemes involving actual colors and hoping to get a lot more painting done this year than last, when all we managed was stripping the floral striped (beige of course) bathroom wallpaper and priming the walls.
It will be fun to see what shape the plaster is in and if walls were strategically papered for a reason...