I don't like KDE at all. Too busy, terrible-looking right click menu on the desktop (some lines long, some short). It's that stuff that give me OCD. I like cleanliness in the UI.
I like KDE’s conformance to open standards, which is better than GNOME’s, and pace of development. However you’re absolutely right that the UI on KDE is inconsistent, messy, and buggy as hell. GNOME is still my go to because it’s just so polished, but I’m looking forward to COSMIC this year for that nice tiling workflow
I've said it before, I don't really like KDE or GNOME because they're on opposite ends of the spectrum.
GNOME seems to have a very vivid ideal of beauty, and that ideal is "empty windows that don't do anything." Open up a utility app, Big window with lots of empty space with a few buttons crammed in the top bar and not enough options to do what you actually need to do.
KDE feels a lot more amateurish in that...things don't line up as well, the spacing between elements is off a lot, and the whole experience is BUSY! Lots of UI elements everywhere. A basic utility will have more options than you knew what to do with just in case. It's hideous the way the control panel at a nuclear power plant is hideous.
So I use Cinnamon. Which Gnome is trying very hard to corrupt, but for now it works while still being comfortable and comprehensible.