Kitchen: closed or open? What room layout?

As a home builder, we always want to be very close to the wishes and ideas of our customers.
After all, you usually only build a house once in your life.

An important aspect in planning the house is the kitchen as the family center.

We would now like to know from you: Which room layout do you prefer?
The open kitchen with a view into the living/dining area?
The closed kitchen with a spacious dining/play corner for the whole family?

Or a completely different option – e.g. with a large cooking island as a communicative center?

We look forward to your ideas, wishes, experiences…, which we understand as inspiration for our work.

I have been living for almost 30 years in an 18m2 kitchen with a large dining area in the corner for 8 people (in a pinch even 10, as we also sit there with our guests, e.g. birthday breakfast) and a separate living room of over 30m2. I would actually prefer it the other way around. Maybe we will still do that and swap when we are alone again. I definitely do not want a huge open-plan space as is common nowadays. I see it as a big advantage to be able to close a door so that no one sees the mess of bean bag sofas – and armchairs, cushions, blankets, magazines, laptops, handicraft stuff, drink bottles, and fitness equipment. I also imagine it would be quite annoying if part of the family couldn’t watch TV or use the laptop undisturbed when my girlfriends are here chatting.

After several attempts, we have now found our optimal kitchen. A large island integrated into a 60 sqm open-plan room. Right next to the island is a large dining table. This way, one of us can cook at the island and still stay in contact with the guests. Food and dishes can easily be brought from the island to the table and back without long distances. Larger buffets can be arranged directly on the island. The dishes are stored in the island, facing the table, in large drawers. Mega practical and still very representative.

As residents of a best ager bungalow living as a couple, we both consciously chose the classic room separation. Kitchen is kitchen, it has 12 sqm and space for an L and a table for four, on the wall side of which a small sofa made of artificial leather stands, two chairs on the other side. The room is connected to the almost equally large utility room, which houses, besides technology, two cabinets and the washing machine plus dryer. In the cabinets are supplies, cleaning agents, and jackets. A sink with a faucet completes the work area. In this kitchen we eat and also like to sit. It has windows facing the street, you can watch whether Mrs. Sch. across is wearing tiger leggings again and so on.
In the living room, there is still a large dining table at the moment, but it will be removed and replaced by a round one with four chairs, extendable to six. We don’t need more because when we celebrate Pahdie, we don’t eat at the table anyway but rather pizza in hand or grilled sausage with bread on a paper plate. We want to celebrate then, not hang around stuffed full.
I think for our generation this is a typical combination. At least in the more rural Schleswig Holstein, Karsten

Clear case. 15 m² kitchen closed.

As a home manufacturer, we always want to be very close to the wishes and ideas of our customers.

If you want to sell your houses not only to Meiers OR Müllers, but to Meiers AND Müllers, there will be no way around continuing to cater equally to open kitchen lovers and closed kitchen lovers in the future.

After all, you usually only build a house once in your life.

I would rather see an attitude here with which one could miss a trend: namely the one towards the second home-building adventure around the age of sixty. Maybe not exactly a mass movement, but certainly clearly on the way away from being a special case.