A liquid crystal display is provided that includes liquid crystal pixel cells arranged at each intersection between a plurality of gate lines and a plurality of data lines, a thin film transistor associated with each pixel cell, a storage capacitor, and a smectic liquid crystal between an upper substrate and a lower substrate. The smectic liquid crystal has spontaneous polarization in a range of approximately 2 nC/cm2 to 100 nC/cm2 and a storage capacitance is in a range of approximately 1 nF/cm2 to 13 nF/cm2 for optimizing transmittance depending on the spontaneous polarization of the smectic liquid crystal.