I ended up buying some of the SPV solar lights and have to say they are amazing. We bought 2 for the drive and 2 for the rear garden but they are so much better than your standard solar light. I have them set to on dim constantly and PIR bright and they are enough to light up the garden and annoy the neighbours with the driveway ones
I have outside lights but prefer a dark garden and a dark neighbourhood so now I never use them. I have a neighbour with a motion sensor floodlight set on their second storey (!) that shines into my bedroom. It's set off by any wind in the trees. I loathe it. All the neighbours have fairy lights and baubles. Give me proper dark any day.
I put a fairly sophisticated system into our garden over thirty years ago.
I laid an armoured multi-core cable from the garage under the concrete raft below the patio, to the house. So we've four switches behind the lounge curtains which control all the lights in the garden.
We also have three PIR security lights. which are attached to the garage and summerhouse. They are independent of this system. All the lights are on the garage supply. It has a modern consumer unit.
We've 5 porch lights, two 12v 30w spotlights, two 12v ex-pool light,s three sets of fairy lights and an illuminated fountain.
The supply for the low voltage stuff is mostly fixed to the concrete base panels of the fences.
We have power in our summerhouse, to the right here, out of shot. (it has its own consumer unit shared with the shed attached to the garage). The cables are in alkathene waterpipe buried 9" down in a side border close to a fence. It'd be a hard job trying to put a spade through it. So it's quite safe. However since I did this installation, the rules about what you can or cannot do with electricity have changed and quite right too.
There is a mains porch light on the side of the summerhouse. But there is a 30w Blagdon spotlight behind the pagoda which is quite effective, the tranformer for this is on the ceiling of the summerhouse.
This is one of our 12v lanterns. The wattage is pretty low no more than about 10w but adequate.
The transformers for the fountain and the second 30w Blagdon spotlight on the pergola trained on the fountain are in the garage.
The 12v supply to this second lantern comes all the way around the garden from the summer house fixed to the fence base panels
The low voltage supply to the fountain is in conduit under the path.
We don't often turn all the lights on, "as the neighbours complain it makes the street lights dim."
I think if you choose Blagdon or similar 30w low voltage lights, they will be quite effective. They are probably LED now and brighter, ours are halogen.
We just have basic motion-sensor lights near the doors and the garage door so we can see to get keys in the locks, and one round the back in case I'm a bit late fetching the washing in. One is mains (there was already the wiring in place) and the rest are fairly cheap solar ones, similar to this (but I don't know where OH bought ours). They've lasted two years and counting, and they get enough light to charge them even in winter. They rarely come on spuriously, and don't pick up low-level motion like the neighbour's cat wandering around, and they go off a few seconds after the movement stops. Just enough light, for long enough, to see what we're doing.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
https://www.bats.org.uk/about-bats/threats-to-bats/lighting