I'm in a similar situation; I think QuickShell [1] could be a compelling option, particularly premade configs for it like DankMaterialShell [2] (which is intended for Niri).

[1] https://quickshell.org/

[2] https://github.com/AvengeMedia/DankMaterialShell

I've been very happy with Noctalia. https://github.com/noctalia-dev/noctalia-shell