Particular embodiments described herein provide for an electronic device that includes a display, a backlight for the display, and one or more ambient light guiding layers to supplement the backlight with ambient light. In an example, one of the one or more ambient light guiding layers is located on a back side of the electronic device. An ambient light guide monitoring engine can monitor an intensity of ambient light and a display engine can use data from the ambient light monitoring engine to determine the intensity of the backlight for the display.