Developers may be finding it tricky to provide new properties for homebuyers with modest means but ever-rising expectations. Yet their ability to tackle a challenge should not be in doubt, if the customer has the necessary funds.

Builders and designers are changing their game to adapt to the altering tastes of footballers’ wives. Forget the gilt palm trees. The players and their wives are now embracing understated elegance in architectural and interior style, although whether the new series of Footballers’ Wives, which starts next Thursday on ITV1, will reflect this revolution is not yet clear. Suzi Walker, a former Page 3 model and the wife of Ian Walker, the Bolton Wanderers’ goalkeeper, freely admits that she was the template for Chardonnay in the first series. But she believes that the flamboyant style of decor associated with that character has had its day.

“It’s individual, brand-new, architectdesigned houses that are popular now. And in terms of interiors, fake leopard skin, chintz and gold have had their day. Now it’s all about clean-cut lines, with no clutter. Oh yeah, and loads of Buddhas,” she says, waving towards the line of statues guarding her fireside.

The Walkers — Suzi, 34, Ian, 33, and their daughter, Sophie, 7 — moved last month to a newly built, £2 million, six-bedroom home in Cobham, Surrey. They will not be short of friends from the football world there: Graham Le Saux lives next door and they can expect several more Premiership players to move to the area soon. “We sell about 20 per cent to footballers and at the moment we have two or three Chelsea players looking to buy near by,” says Mayad Allos, the architect half of the Allos Jasinski partnership of developers.

This is the third house move for the Walkers in a decade. In 1996 they paid £575,000 for a house in Hanbury Manor, Hertfordshire, and in 1999 they moved on to Harlow, Essex, where Suzi’s perceived taste led to her being caricatured by the media as the archetypal “footballer’s wife”. Possibly she deserved it — her furnishings did include a 3ft leopard statue, buffalo-skin cushions and zebra table mats. The next move, in 2003, to a £1.5 million Octagon development in Cobham, brought a marked revolution in style — the couple bought the show home, fully furnished by Hill House Interiors in muted pastels and café-crème colours.

You find the Walkers’ new house behind high walls and electronic security gates at the end of a private road. At first glance it has the formal look of a small embassy. “I wanted to develop a Georgian symmetry. I didn’t want it to be too imposing,” Allos says.

But there’s a cool, white, Mediterranean feel to the house once inside. The hall is stunning; its limestone floor leads into the linking reception rooms with through views to the grounds. And upward the eye is drawn to the vast, rounded staircase — a heavy, stone mass made softer by its curves. All the downstairs rooms are light and airy, with 10ft-high ceilings and tall windows. The living room and dining room are separated only by a central dividing wall, with space around its sides. “The idea is to encourage flow between the two rooms,” Allos says. “You should be able to have parties of between 80 to 100 people in there without the rooms seeming crowded.” There is also a cosy television room adjoining the kitchen/breakfast room. The company part-furnished the rooms, mainly in light browns and linens, for about £120,000, and the pieces were sourced by Aida Allos, Mayad’s wife, in Belgium, Italy and Spain.

One final addition the Walkers are having installed is the most up-to-date security system — a priority, as they were burgled at their last home. “It was when Ian was away playing in Europe. I heard the dogs barking in the middle of the night, but I thought they’d just found a fox in the garden. Then, in the morning, I found everything moved, the plasma screen hanging off the wall, my purse gone and footprints in the hall.” The thieves took the family’s £75,000 Range Rover, cash, credit cards and a £1,500 personal organiser, adding up to a loss of £20,000 — although the police found the car later.

The roof gardens and terraces outside the bedrooms are a reminder for the Walkers of their £1 million villa in Marbella. The six bedrooms are split between the top two floors and five of them are en suite. The odd one out is being changed into a television room for Sophie — a seven-year-old’s fantasy sprawling space with wall-to-wall sofas. The shower in the main bedroom is easily big enough for a five-a-side team.

Suzi Walker had a charmed, glitzy youth. The daughter of a big band leader, Johnny Howard, she went to Greenacre School, where she was a contemporary of Alex Pursey, who went on to marry George Best, then to the Italia Conti stage school, where she met Naomi Campbell. She spent a summer season singing and dancing with one of her father’s bands in Monaco before meeting Ian Walker in the early 1990s on a blind date.

The new house in Cobham is the couple’s fifth new home in 12 years — not including the Marbella home. Why the restlessness? “It was bred into me,” she says. “We lived around Kingston upon Thames, and my father was always fascinated by the latest style in houses. We’d be living happily in a big executive detached home, then he’d find another similar place that he preferred and we’d be packing again. We moved house every two years, so my lifestyle hasn’t changed since then. I think it’s normal.”

How does Cobham compare to the setting for Footballers’ Wives? “It’s a good place to meet friends and have lunch,” says Walker, clutching Isabel, her Yorkshire terrier, who is wearing a pink dress from Selfridges. “You get a nicer class of people in Cobham — not so many tattoos . . .”

• The new series of Footballers’ Wives starts on Thursday, February 23, on ITV1 at 9pm

  FANTASY FITTINGS

• Electronic gates with video entry (to see fans freezing outside on Sundays).
• Giant garage with playroom above for Dwayne and Kylie’s kiddies’ parties.
• Kitchen with granite worktops, double fridge freezer, expresso coffee maker.
• Copy of OK! magazine (with owner featured) displayed on central island.
• Plasma-screen televisions in every room. Vast 60in plasma in home cinema.
• Lutron mood lighting: bright for when “over the moon”, dim for when “gutted”.
• Massive master bedroom with walk-in “his ’n’ hers” dressing rooms.
• Bathroom with egg baths, huge wet room, Roman quantities of marble.
• Indoor pool with loungers. No outdoor pool — what’s Marbella for?
• Lawns for kick-abouts with the rest of the team. BBQ and terrace. Not too many flowers — they make a mess.

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