Style the Background
Adding a nice background can be just as effective as styling text. By
decorating the text body background, you are styling the text. Styling the
background can be visually beautiful but can also reduce legibility. This is
potentially a big problem but easily avoidable.
Keep the Contrast
First and foremost, it important to keep contrast within a readable range.
For the background, use colors that are much subtler and duller than those
of the text. This will allow the user՚s eye to focus on the text and not be
distracted by the background.
Textures Work Nicely
The best road to take with the background is to use a nice texture, which
won՚t detract from the typography.
Here is a dark Web site with a good typographic style. The typography has
a decorative background, but the contrast still works nicely. The text itself
has no styling, but the background makes up for it.