Options for wall (and ceiling) coverings

dunroving

I feel like I am asking for more than my fair share of advice at the moment, but here's another one! I am capable of using Google, honestly I am, but the advice on here seems to cut to the chase, so I really appreciate it.

The most common wall covering options I see are:

Wallpaper of various kinds
Wallpaper that is painted
Plaster plus paint

Other options such as dado rails, picture rails, tongue and groove, etc. are not on my radar.

Of all the above, the one I am most familiar with is plaster plus paint (at my current house, which was replastered in 2009). From my own house and observations in other people's houses with even recently-applied plaster, the problem seems to be the constant appearance and reappearance of cracks of various directions and sizes. Repairing cracks necessitates repainting (often the whole wall if matching paint can't be had).

My "new" house has a variety of textured and smooth (but with a pattern) wallpaper. Some of the ceilings are also papered, but with an inoffensive Anaglypta type pattern that I am happy to keep. I'm pretty sure that all of the walls will look tired when I eventually move in, because I have seen several pictures taken off the wall during a home visit, and there were "shadows" where the frame was. So doing nothing isn't really an option.

Here are what I see are my options, with questions:

Simply paint all the walls for now, and do more permanent redecoration in a year or two.
Questions: Is painting the wallpaper feasible? And will that make it more difficult to subsequently remove it?

Remove all the wallpaper in the house (I have about 3 weeks to play with before moving in, and currently would intend to do this myself). Get walls skimmed if necessary, and simply apply paint for now.
Questions: Would painting the walls create any difficulty if I subsequently decide to wallpaper (which is very possible)? Would it be more sensible to apply lining paper before painting?

As above, but after skimming, re-paper. I'm currently reluctant to do this because I'd not want to rush choosing wallpaper. One of the joys of a new house is deliberating on decor, and this is best done after living there a while. But maybe there are good reasons to do this straight away, that I am not thinking of?

I am no expert, but can strip paper and paint walls. I'd hire pros to do most of the work.

Doozergirl

If you are wiring in the house then that would make now the optimum time to decide on whether to plaster the walls as work is going to need to be done to fill in all the channels. It's not always easy to acheive a perfect finish by just filling them in after that.

A re-wire is going to ruin every wall of wallpaper so existing wallpaper is not going to be a viable option to you.

dunroving

Thanks Doozergirl. Was thinking along these lines but not sure currently which walls and rooms will be affected. Also didn't want to overcomplicated the thread by introducing the rewiring issue.

If the walls end up needing skimming besides restoring where wiring is installed I wasn't sure what the implications were of trying to put wallpaper onto relatively recently installed plaster.