I feel your pain. I'm also unable to go the ceiling light route (solid concrete floors and ceilings). The best solution I've found is sticking a wireless switch on the wall next to the regular light switches. There are ones that look like a regular modern style wall switch, just thick because there are AAAs in it. The one I have is just some cheap thing that was on Amazon, but for larger-scale applications Lutron has a whole line of wireless lighting control products (Maestro).

I was surprised how bright the 100W-equivalent LED unit from Philips is. It is rated at 1780 lumens vs 1600 for an incandescent 100W.