All the issues that we’d been warned about became painfully apparent, along with an entire host of secondary problems that I’d inadvertently created myself. I suddenly realised that there were two strands to baby-proofing – making your house safe for a young child, but also decorating in a way that was durable enough to allow your home to weather the equivalent of a small tornado.

However, by this point, I was about to have a second child, so there was no going back – I simply had to live with the decisions I’d made. Ultimately, I’m glad I didn’t allow the prospect of starting a family to affect my choice of home, but here are some of the things that I’d wish I’d known about living with toddlers and young children, before I’d started redecorating.

Wallpaper with caution

High-traffic areas and wallpaper don’t mix particularly well, as the colour consultant and designer Emma Diaz discovered. ‘I was desperate to include a beautiful wallpaper by Tess Newall when she launched it a few years ago – and it is still one of my favourite spaces here in the cottage,’ she says. ‘The best place that I could find for it was up the stairs. This looks incredibly pretty, but is the most impractical decision I have made in the cottage where our son is involved. Mucky fingers after dinner and garden playtimes mean that there are now countless marks from my son climbing up the stairs towards the bathroom – so I definitely wouldn’t be wallpapering from floor to ceiling with a child in the house again!’

Limit open shelving

Initially, I was thrilled that my house had plenty of custom-built joinery. There were bookcases everywhere – and I loved books! Fast forward several years, and there is a rising tide of empty bottom shelves, as I keep moving my beloved library out of the growing reach of babies, who like nothing better than to enthusiastically unpack things. I now understand why so many bookcases have cupboards at the bottom of them.

Consider kitchen cabinetry

On a similar note, it’s now very fashionable to eschew high-level kitchen cupboards in favour of open shelves, giving a more spacious and less ‘fitted’ feel. However, one or two above-counter cabinets would certainly come in useful if you have small children, providing much-needed storage for kitchen items that are too ugly to have out on display. You might think that the solution is simply to put child locks on the lower-level units, but that isn’t ideal either, as you will inevitably spend vast amounts of time attempting to open them. So much time, in fact, that your toddler also learns how to open the safety locks, thus defeating the entire purpose of them.

Keep rooms clear

‘The temptation when you are taking on a renovation or decorating project is to fill the space,’ says Victoria Gray of Olivine Design. ‘In fact, clear floor space is what you will want most.’ In her own home, Victoria ended up removing a desk from her open-plan kitchen when her two children were small in order to free up more room for them to play. ‘It is also so important to remember that you can’t decorate for just one age as they grow up quickly and will need different requirements from the rooms,’ she continues. ‘Our advice would be to create interiors that can be added to without having to change everything, for example choose colours that will grow with your children and fabrics that suit different ages.’