I'm redoing the the front lawn. Would like to add limited low voltage
lighting beside the walkways. What brands do you suggest? What brands do
you NOT suggest? Have you installed it yourself? What would you do
differently? What should I watch out for during design or installation?

I've installed both plastic and metal low-voltage lights at various times.
The plastic were the standard Malibu "tier" lights that come in a set and
the metal were a "Twilight" brand set, I believe (at Lowe's). They were
both equally easy to install and anyone can do it without any special
knowledge. The instructions will take you through the installation step by
step. My personal preference is the metal lights -- I just think they look
a little bit nicer.

Some things to consider:

1) Most "kits" come with some lights, wire, and the transformer. In many
kits, the transformer is sized to handle only the total wattage of the
lights that come in the kit (maybe one more). If you are buying an
all-in-one kit, make sure you decide whether you'll be adding any additional
lights. If so, you may need to upsize the transformer. You can only add
lights to the transformer as long as the total wattage of the lights is less
than the wattage capacity of the transformer. If you know you'll add
additional lights soon after (or during) installation, it may be more
cost-effective to piece out the parts individually, especially if you'll
need to buy a larger transformer to support the additional lights soon after
the initial installation.

2) Some kits come with 15 or 20 of the tier (pathway) lights. You don't
have to install *every* single light just because it was included in the
kit. I've seen houses where people have 8 linear feet of walkway and they
line both sides of it using *every* light in a 20-light kit, ending up with
a lamp about every 12 inches on both sides of a 3-foot walkway. This design
tends to look like a runway at night g. Space the lamps out and design it
on paper first. The tier walkway lights will cast a decent arc of light on
the walkway so you won't need them that close together. Remeber, you're not
trying to allow people to read a book out there g, just illuminate the
walkway for so its visible underfoot. Landscape lighting is one place where
"less is more" can really hold true. Better to have a few well-positioned
lights that a boat-load of lights all over the place.

3) The lamp-to-wire connectors that came in both kits I used were kind of
flaky in design and didn't really guarantee a good connection. In a number
of cases, they needed to be removed and reclamped or repositioned on the
wire to get a good, stable connection - YMMV. Make sure your connectors are
tight when adding the lamps to the main wire run. You may want to trench
and bury the wire as you install the lamps, but I'd recommend leaving the
lamp connections for each fixture above ground until you finish testing
everything with power applied. Then go back and bury the connectors next to
their respective lamps. Leave the system on while you bury each connector
so you can see if the light flickers while moving the connector to bury it.
If it does, the connector is probably not on just right and should be
repositioned.

4) One thing I did when I designed our layout was I took a picture of the
front of our house at night with our digital camera. Then I loaded it on the
PC and brought it up in Photoshop. I used the paintbrush tool to drop small
fuzzy "drops" of light yellow onto the photo where I thought the lamps
should go. This allowed me to "see" about how it would look overall and
mostly helped me decide on the spacing within the context of the entire
landscape.

5) Designing your entire layout first will also allow you to determine
whether or not you'll buy a "kit" or piece it out individually. If you're
only going to use 6 out of 10 walkway lights from the kit, and you won't use
the flood lights at all, buying a kit may not be cost-effective. Decide
what you *need* first, then look and see if any kits closely match your
plan's needs. It may turn out the kit that most closely matches your plan
costs more than if you bought *exactly* what you needed as individual parts.

Hope this helps...

Good Luck,
-- Vinnie