Who wouldn’t love a designer home straight out of the glossy interiors magazines? At some stage, however – unless you intend to remain a toxic bachelor and spend all your salary on Arne Jacobsen furniture – you will probably have to face the reality of creating a family home. Here are some common dilemmas homeowners face – and how to avoid feeling you’re missing out.

1. Wet room v bathroom

Nothing could be cooler than a luxurious, Italian-tiled walk-in shower with heated floors – until it springs a leak, that is. For the risk-averse, traditional bathtubs are a safer option, and more fun for splashing around in. If you insist on a wet room, keep it on the ground floor.

2. Dining room v eat-in kitchen

The more traditionally minded among us love the idea of introducing our children to formal dining. Be realistic, though: will a dining table just stand there gathering dust while you all squeeze around the one in the kitchen?

3. Curtains v blinds

You may have fantasised about rolls of exotic shot silk and satin, elegantly draped to make the perfect frame for your bay windows, but do you really have time to rearrange their folds? Blinds are modern, Mediterranean and more practical.

4. Open-plan v small rooms

A huge living area is certainly appealing – and painfully trendy – but if you have kids, make sure that it doesn’t turn into a giant playroom. And wouldn’t you like to have a room you could escape to?

5. Carpet v wooden floors

Those perfect white carpets get shabby with footprints before long, and fast become a lighter shade of grey. The wooden-floor option is perennially popular and never passé.

6. Study v guest room

Always wanted a personal retreat, with an oak desk, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and photos of your finer moments? Make it flexible if you want the grandparents to baby-sit at weekends and there’s nowhere else for them to stay.

7. Wallpaper v neutral paint

Bold, hand-painted patterns on walls can soon be ruined by small, sticky fingers – play it safe with eggshell paint in cool colours.

8. Sculpted garden v paddling pool

Remember, your mini-Versailles, complete with topiary, nymph statuettes and colourful flowerbeds, will also have to accommodate the unstylish – trampoline, tyre swing, paddling pool, guinea-pig hutch and crumbling shed. Don’t be precious.

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