Comment by Telaneo

Probably a better question, atleast for a wide variety of books. Some authors however are very into writing detailed descriptions of places because that's how their brains work and what their readers enjoy, but 95% of those descriptions have nothing to do with anything that happens later in the book, other than hiding the one tiny detail that actually does become relevant.

If 'why are the curtains blue' were consistently explained together with Chekhov's gun, then maybe we wouldn't be here having this discussion.