Backlight device, method of driving backlight and liquid crystal display apparatus

The present invention prevents extension of the time period from powering on a device to convergence of chromaticity of emitted white light on a certain chromaticity, irrespective of the temperature when the device is powered on. A color liquid crystal display apparatus includes a liquid crystal display unit, a backlight employing LEDs of red, green and blue as its light source, a drive unit for driving the LEDs of each color, a temperature sensor for sensing the temperature of the LEDs, and a chromaticity sensor for sensing the chromaticity of white light emitted from the LEDs. The drive unit supplies a current to the LEDs to drive them, and implements feedback control of the amount of current for the LEDs of each color based on a value sensed by the chromaticity sensor so that the white light has a certain chromaticity. Furthermore, upon powering on the backlight, the drive unit retrieves initial current values of the LEDs of each color from a non-volatile memory, and corrects the initial current values according to a value sensed by the temperature sensor to activate the LEDs of each color with the corrected value.