
New Vegas Redesigned 2 fixes some of the horrendously ugly faces, and also changes some faces to more suit the voice/personality of the character. Realistic Wasteland Lighting removes the orange filter over everything in NV, making the landscape look much nicer IMO. Overall, it makes interiors darker, but there's an option for a bigger/brighter pip boy light to compensate. It also removes a lot of lights without a source, and adds more light coming from windows.

Interior Lighting Overhaul will tie the lighting to actual light sources, with switches to turn them off. There are heaps of ENBs out there, but I use these mods because they have little to no performance impact but really make the game look better.

Quick Trade will open the trade interface by right-clicking on a trader. HUD/UI improvements: OneHUD for an immersive and highly-customisable HUD, Weapon Stat Viewer for viewing detailed weapon stats in the pipboy, Darnified UI (with DR/DT display) for a smaller, sleeker UI, and Unified Hud Project to get all your HUDs working together. Performance mods (if you've got a decent PC you probably won't need the last three unless you prefer the look), including New Vegas Anti Crash, New Vegas Stutter Remover, Cipscis Automatic Save Manager, Performance of the Gods, Clean Deluxe New Vegas and Better Game Performance.

Some people also recommend Mission Mojave, but that also adds some content and I haven't had any experience with it myself. Full details are in the readme - it's massive. Yukichigai Unofficial Patch - A pure bugfix mod, including multiple perks not doing anything, quest errors, etc. These don't add any new areas or quests, they just fix and add mechanics to the base game, so much so that I'd consider these mods my "foundation" for a game, then I'll add other mods such as Project Nevada (with Extra Options), A World of Pain, JSawyer's mod, Monster Mod, etc.

Here are my personal mod recommendations for New Vegas, more or less descending in order of importance.
