Linux

The distribution doesn't to too much, its mostly the desktop environment. I like the look of KDE Plasma the most. But usually I craft my own look after a while.

I don't think it's the distros job to look visually appealing. That's the job of the desktop environment. Seriously I wish distributions would just ship vanilla desktop environments. All of the themed variants always have some issues. Maybe I'm just old and stubborn but that's my opinion.

Definitely OpenBSD's default fvwm

Garuda Hyprland edition. All the neon-RGB styling of Garuda gamer on top of Hyprland's smooth UI.

You're asking about the desktop environment and its default settings, which may or may not be the same on any given distro.

But I have a tie between Plasma and Cinnamon (mint's DE). They both take only minor tweaking to get where I want them, and I can use them both out of the box with zero complaints.

The new COSMIC desktop by System76 and Pop!_OS is very promising. I've been running the pre-alpha, and have been very impressed.

EndeavourOS has a pretty nice colour scheme and wallpaper going by default.

If I was forced to use a default distro look, it would be that or Linux Mint probably.

GNOME

Pop!_OS

Gnome with a bit of a macOS twist. I really like it. I'm excited for Cosmic!

Fedora Workstation. Gnome is pretty great on the eyes, and there's a healthy Libadwaita apps ecosystem that is just *chefs kiss*

ElementaryOS also looks great for the system and core apps, although there's not really a third party app ecosystem that fits with the Pantheon theme, unfortunately.

deepin or zorin

Honestly, whilst I would not recommend this at all, I find CutefishOS (you could argue it doesn't even need to be a distro) incredibly visually appealing.

Perhaps I will get downvoted for being a sucker for modern visuals, but the theme is consistent, simple and easy on my eyes.

Although I like GNOME, the consistency bothers me and some of the design choices are inconsistent and don't make for a great user experience, looking at Nautilus for example.

I think GNOME looks very visually appealing with it's consistency. The Libadwaita library has a nice aesthetic and looks very clean with nice spacing for elements to "breathe".

I still prefer KDE since I can tailor the look to my needs and I prefer to have clutter over extra clicks. (I have top bar with "Opened programs", Launcher, System tray, Time and a global menu and KWin script for managing Activities)

I feel like modern era of design has gone a bit overboard with the "clean" direction. It can be contrasted with Windows XP where you click "All programs" and you literally get all programs in the start menu with options of how to run or open them. I prefer to do "Menu" - > "Submenu" - > "Thing I want".

Come to think of it I should probably make a launcher for KDE.

You mean Desktop?

Distro, I think Lubuntu does LXQt better than Fedora LXQt.

But LXQt is a huge mix of mostly KDE Theming.

Garuda Linux looks very nice

Hmm there is stuff like Archcraft (maybe it has a different name now idk) that is made specifically for visuals. In terms of usable distros I'd say Xero is the best I know. It seems to be discontinued though. CachyOS has some nice WM setups too but the appealing visuals can't be consistent in that case because they are not full DEs and the unreasonably tiny calendar pop-up window from Xfce always ruins everything.

As one comment mentioned, it depends more on the DE. But out of the box, I’d say Peppermint, Elementary, and Mint.

My favourite looking DE is GNOME with the WhiteSur theme and SF-Pro system font

Distros aren't going to be visually appealing as they typically and just standard desktops or CLI

Out of the box, I love Vanilla OS's color scheme and wallpaper, with Fedora in second place for a default Gnome environment. I like the Pop_OS theme. I use River WM with a gruvbox theme (Vivaldi with no open tabs pictured), which is about as far from out of the box as you can get. Incidentally, I've been team light theme forEVER, but I've switched with gruvbox.

Hardy Heron

Xerolinux. It's basically a heavily themed KDE

Pantheon desktop (Elementary OS)

You mean the default setup of the desktop?

...Reminds me of this.

Linux Mint has a smooth, out-of-your-way look & feel to either MATE or Cinnamon that just makes me feel at home

Really depends on the desktop but in terms of default desktops that are shipped with distros I'm picking Fedora's GNOME (pretty much stock) and MX Linux's XFCE.

Gentoo.