Most of us agreed on most things most of the time. These steps meant that the redesign went through several iterations. There were various other inspirations that helped drive the process - some we kept, others we dropped reluctantly, usually because they clashed with some other design elements or objectives. Not all users are able to see all colors. There are some particular combinations of foreground and background colors that most people can read quite well, but some people can't.
Some combinations are just unreadable for most.
Judicious use of color helps 'branding', i.e. establishing site identity. Gold background for non-content areas such as navigation menus was first popularised by CNet , but WDVL was already doing it back then. We've also been using pale yellow as a backdrop for some time. As mentioned above, we considered a background image but abandoned it. The user verdict was in favor of the off-white.