Some of the layers available on openstreetmap.org look bad because they are blurry. The issue occurs with Standard, CyclOsm, and Humanitarian map types. This does not happen for Bicycle Map, Traffic Map, and Tracetracks Topo.
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Different technologies are used to create the different map styles you can see on osm.org. The one used by e.g. the “standard” map is mostly unchanged since 2012 or so. As you can imagine, something that looked perfectly fine on a 1024x768 monitor or an even smaller phone screen then might not look great now.
Each of the map styles you refer to is maintained by volunteers. If you want to help them update their map styles, please volunteer. Two of the three styles are hosted by volunteers too; they’d need more cash from somewhere for extra storage.
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I don’t think this is entirely fair. The standard OSM Carto layer switched to using (scalable) SVGs for icons (rather than bitmaps) some time ago, with PNGs only used for some landcover/pattern symbols. As demonstrated by Tracestack Topo (which is a recent fork of a OSM Carto), there is no technical reason why OSM Carto (or other mapnik-based styles) can’t be served as “retina” tiles with double resolution.
I remember this happening to me before. It turned out I had slightly zoomed into the site (not just the tiles but the whole UI) which caused most of the layers to appear slightly blurry.
Of course, it also might have a different reason but accidentally zooming into the site is one of the more common reasons.
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Oh thanks, I just realised I’d done this too! It looks noticeably less blurry now, although still not perfect.
I’m hoping the vector tile project will fully solve this problem 
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I tried at various zoom levels, no difference.
I’m just saying half of them are able to render properly without pixelation, what is wrong with the other half?
Basically, “you haven’t volunteered to make it look any better” 
That sounds harsh, but all these map styles are maintained by volunteers, and you get the fruits of their labour for free.
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That’s true, although even with .svgs used for icons it’s not as simple as flipping a switch, you need to make sure that the scale of everything matches everything else (text, icons, intensity of fill etc) and the tiles are bigger.
I did briefly look at doing this for a map style of mine and the benefits didn’t justify the cost (primarily of time).
No, I have donated and contributed to the map data. Please don’t make such assumptions. Besides, I meant the technical reason, but I think it’s clear at this point anyway. Vector tiles is the real solution.