I feel this site shows why websites need more than 512kb these days... Most of these are just unaesthetic, simple personal sites with a few blog posts. Nothing wrong with that but nothing to glorify either.
512kb is still a lot of space to play with. My website - the one I live from - is about half of that, except on longer articles. That's despite large header images and quality-of-life JavaScript. It wasn't very hard to keep it that way.
Custom fonts, images that look nice on retina / hdpi screens, complex responsive layouts can all add up. Images are obviously the worst offender, but the rest all contribute.
Of course, aesthetics are a matter of subjectivity, so what is pleasing to one might be gaudy or bare to another. It is largely a matter of picking your audience, I think.