An LCD display system provides colored backlighting to enhance the viewing experience of presentations by the display system. The liquid crystal display (LCD) system includes a monochrome LCD to display monochrome information including at least two sectors; at least two backlighting elements to emit light in a plurality of colors, each backlighting element associated with one sector of the LCD and configured to backlight the one associated sector with a color light; and a processing device to control display of the information on the LCD and to select the color emitted by each backlighting from the plurality of colors. Each backlighting element may include two or more different color light emitting diodes (LEDs) wherein the intensity of each color LED is controlled by the processing device to provide the color selected by the processing device. A reflective element may be positioned relative to the backlighting element to reflect the color light emitted by the backlighting element. A diffusing element may be positioned between the backlighting element and the LCD.