So, I used to be convinced that the kitchen had to be closed. Because you can close the door and no one sees inside while cooking. Because the cooking smell (when you’re hungry it’s a scent, when you’re full it’s food stench *g*) stays there. My first apartment had a separate kitchen with a very small dining area (for max. 2 people; basically I always ate there alone as a single, guests were seated in the living room, where the dining table was as well).
Honestly: it’s a nice delusion that the smell stays in the kitchen. That might work if you’re cooking vegetables, but if you have a roast in the oven for 3 or more hours or frying 4 steaks in the pan, you can have the best-closing door to the kitchen: the whole house / apartment will smell like food.
What helps against that is a good controlled residential ventilation system and a good extractor, whether a hood or the new ones that directly extract at the cooktop (Heaven, I can’t think of the name right now!), whatever. And if necessary, airing out well after the meal.
A door to the kitchen has never helped me prevent food smells from spreading.
But I had guests sitting alone in the living room while I still finished the last tasks in the kitchen.
The next apartment had an open kitchen-living room and the living room was separate. The smell problem was the same, so afterward there was heavy airing out (despite the extractor hood). The guests sat without exception in the kitchen, the living room was never used. I was sitting there with my ex alone in front of the TV or on Sunday afternoon reading. With guests we were always in the sociable kitchen. For me that was definitely much better, it was fun, the guests got something to drink, I could talk with them while I finished up the last tasks and I didn’t feel bad that my guests were sitting alone in the living room (or standing in my way in the kitchen, that annoys me too).
In our current apartment I have for the first time an open kitchen/dining/living area and I LOVE it!!! Never again otherwise (notabene: I was initially a strict advocate of the closed kitchen door!). It’s so much more communicative, guests can immediately sit at the table or lounge on the couch with an aperitif. By the way, I cannot understand the problem of a chaotic kitchen after cooking at all. I always clean up while cooking, it’s pure self-discipline, I got that from my mother from the very start (and she didn’t have a dishwasher back then; all dishes, pots etc. that were no longer needed were immediately washed and put away, that works too!). When I finish cooking, my kitchen is clean as well, there are no piles of unwashed cooking utensils lying around (and I’m managing that nowadays with just one (!) 45 cm dishwasher). I honestly don’t understand how one can turn a kitchen into such a mess, but I often see it. But that’s really a learning process and I can only recommend it to everyone, whether the kitchen is open or closed: then you don’t have a pile of cleaning up after the meal in the kitchen and that is VERY pleasant.
Our house will have an open living/cooking/dining area and since we don’t like carpets anyway, the flooring is no issue (we’re getting wood). But I find white carpet in the kitchen strange too. That’s surely going to be fun...
Floor-to-ceiling windows: we like them, they simply make it brighter when the light falls right onto the floor. Therefore, as many floor-to-ceiling windows as possible are planned for us, mostly with sliding doors so that the living area can be extended outside in summer.
I think you can definitely place something in front of the fixed part of sliding doors. Maybe not the full room height of the living room wall, but a lowboard, a stove (of course always with some distance to the window), I don’t find that bad at all. In the office I can also well imagine a desk in front of a floor-to-ceiling window.
But that’s all a matter of taste.
Views inside, especially when it’s dark and you have the light on inside, can also be reduced quite well with an appropriate lighting concept (illuminating the window from outside, for example). A sophisticated lighting concept is very helpful here.
I don’t understand balconies in a detached house anyway, especially not at the parents’ bedroom (who on earth goes out on the balcony before or after sleeping??? For the cigarette afterwards???). If you have a garden and a terrace, you use those. I only know unused balconies on detached houses... wait, I don’t want to lie: one family uses their balcony. They have a house on a slope and the kitchen on the ground floor (that’s the level with the street entrance). They have a dining area on the balcony, accessible directly from the kitchen, and it’s used. The remaining balcony (on the south side in front of all the rooms with a wonderful mountain view) is completely useless.
But also here: whoever has their heart set on a balcony should just build one...