Over a local ring R, the theory of cohomological support varieties attaches to any bounded complex M of finitely generated R-modules an algebraic variety V_R (M) that encodes homological properties of M. We give lower bounds for the dimension of V_R (M) in terms of classical invariants of R. In particular, when R is Cohen–Macaulay and not complete intersection we find that there are always varieties that cannot be realized as the cohomological support of any complex. When M has finite projective dimension, we also give an upper bound for dim V_R (M) in terms of the dimension of the radical of the homotopy Lie algebra of R. This leads to an improvement of a bound due to Avramov, Buchweitz, Iyengar, and Miller on the Loewy lengths of finite free complexes, and it recovers a result of Avramov and Halperin on the homotopy Lie algebra of R. Finally, we completely classify the varieties that can occur as the cohomological support of a complex over a Golod ring.