Will whole house smell of food if we go open-plan?

[Garnett]

We're moving house and have found somewhere we really like. My wife has big plans to make the ground floor more open plan which will involve removing the kitchen door and part of the wall - this will mean there's no divide between kitchen and stairwell.

On hearing these plans, my ever-caring but always "glass-half-empty" mum immediately said, "Food and cooking smells will go straight up the stairs and the whole house will smell of food".

I'm thinking a decent hood extractor should see to that.

Am I being naive?

Our house is open plan and it's fine. It's fine for noise too but our flooring isn't noisy, our dishwasher is dead quiet and we have a second living area that can be closed off if we want.

I think climate makes a difference, we have windows open most days and a nice breeze through the house.

But I just remembered we often cook outside on the weber too!

Our house isn't exactly open plan but the stairs go up from the kitchen. You can only smell food from upstairs, can't smell it at all in the living room downstairs. I like waking up to the smell of bread baking in the machine.