For looks, I like ebony (except the helmet). But for practicality, dragon plate is my pick. Materials are cheap and available thanks to the dragons attacking you every 10 seconds. It can smithed up to maximum levels. And the look has grown on me. I kind of like glass in the light path (or rather malachite). Plus as the dragonborn, you do want to advertise yourself as a dragon slayer right? How better than to outfit me and Lydia in full dragonplate?

I use daedric for the weapons (and sometimes ebony). They really should have given us dragon weapons (presumably dragonbone handles and blades made of something else like ebony, steel, etc.).

I do like the look of the blades armor too.

Female:

Linwe's Cuirass
Nightingale Boots
Mourners Hat

--

Ebony Armour
Shrouded Hood/Cowl (The Mage one)
Nightingale Gloves
Orcish Boots

--

Glass set with Wedding Wreath (very noble)

&

Stormcloak Officer Cuirass
Penitus Oculatus Boots
Guild Masters Hood

With a Dwarven Greatsword

Personally, I love scale armor. It just has that adventurer feel. I also love the legion armors, especially the heavy version. Very Roman legion feel, though an unexpected and seemingly devolution from the legion armor in oblivion (from full plate mail to romanized armor in a colder province? umm, huh?)

I also think the daedric and ebony armors look great. the skyrim daedric is a VAST improvement over the oblivion daedric, same with ebony. Glass and elven too, actually. Glss looks alot less... cartoony than it did in oblivion, and elven looks just as ornate but less frivolous (why have elven armor that has shoulders sticking out several inches when your arms are exposed? The skyrim armor is a step in the right direction to providing better practical attention.)

I can't help but like the look of the regular leather armor on my female orc. It's a simple, yet good looking design. Elven Armor looks quite nice as well, with all the intracate bits, while not getting to bulky.
I went all the way up to glass only to realize it looked quite ugly.

Based on the fact that Imperials wore the same roman-esqe armour in Morrowind, it appears that the roman armour is their border-guard armour.

I used 'armour' way too much in that sentence

hmm I guess that would make sense. I joined the Elder Scrolls series during the oblivion age, so I never played morrowind.

Got my hands on some forworn pieces. Kept the boots and gauntlets because they had useful magical buffs. But they do look terribly WoW-ish...or worse, anime.

Steel, Leather, Elven, Glass. Haven't played a heavy armor wearer much yet, so I'm not terribly familiar with the upper level heavies.


edit: I'm always surprised by anti-anime bias among modern gamers. Probably because I grew up when gamers were niche/geek/etc, the same group that was also into anime. All my gamer friends over the last decades have also been into anime. Hmm.

Forgive me. I live in Japan - have done so on and off since 1998. There's nothing here worse than a foreigner who digs anime. It's not even a jock/geek thing. After all i'm playing a video game. They're just beyond the pale.

i really love the Nightingale armor.

Of the standard armors, i like the Daedric, Ebony and Glass armors the most.

hmm I think it's a pretty general consensus here that the Skyrim glass armor is vastly superior to the oblivion glass in style.