solar lights work fine for us....i think it depends on how bright you need it to be. we find that with table lights/candles, house lights and pool lights that solar lights are plenty. they throw off more light now than they used to too, so i hear.........

I use both.I have the cheap home depot low volt lights around my deck & several solar flickering tiki torches also. My only complaint is the electric lights(black plastic with clear/white cups)don't really go with my tropical plants & tiki torches. I am going to get some stencils & paint made for plastic & see if I can put some palm trees or something on the white parts. But the light they put out is great for walking around the deck at night.

ditto the home depot lights...they can be painted to match their surroundings. We have 6 of these around our waterfall and I painted and textured them to blend with the rock.

Below is a link to our pool thread...sorry this is long, but towards the end are some pics along with details on painting and texturing.

Hope this helps!

Here is a link that might be useful: Low Voltage Lights Around Pool - Long Thread....towards the end.

I'm curious of the different wattage of the LV lights. It'll range from around 11 to 18W. There's also low voltage LED's around 25W. I want lights that actually light up the area a little.

I hear the solar lights are getting better as time goes on.

Here is a link that might be useful: Solar Spot Lights

I have a LOT of low voltage lighting in front of our house, the wattage we're using varies from 4w to 20w. Even a 4w fixture puts off enough light to cast a decent glow on a sidewalk, but we use those mainly for aesthetics rather than lighting. The 20w uplights are halogens and are incredibly bright, they light up the front of the house nearly as well as 150w floods. We also have some 8w and 11w fixtures lighting certain sidewalk areas. When you get into a bunch of lighting like I have it does become a maintenance issue, I'm out there about once a month changing a few bulbs. So make sure you go with fixtures that you can get into easily enough, and that you mount them in places that you have easy access to.

Solar lighting is getting better, but it's not quite there yet. They're starting to use more LEDs in them and that helps. LEDs use a lot less juice and therefore the lights stay on longer. But they add cost too. We have 6 tiki LED solar lights around the pool. They have an awesome candle-like flicker effect. They don't put out much light though. During the summer they stay on all night. In the winter they don't charge as much and only stay on a couple of hours.

Another option that is fairly new is line voltage LED lighting. It's very efficient and the line voltage means you don't need a transformer, and the fixtures can be daisy-chained. The ones I've seen weren't very bright, but I'm sure this will improve. This could be a good trend in the future because LEDs have a long, long life and the elimination of a transformer is a money-saver.