The invention relates to a backlighting arrangement for a light valve display device, such as an LCD-display. The backlighting arrangement comprises a number of elongated light emitting structures (9) arranged in a layer (5), extending in a plane, which structures emit light along their lengths in the direction of a light valve layer (1). An optics layer (7), comprising a number of elongated lenses (11), is placed between the light emitting structures (9) and the light valve layer (1). Each such lens (11) concentrates light emitted by a number of light emitting structures (9) onto a number of elongated areas on the light valve layer (1). Preferably, each light emitting structure (9) emits light of one primary colour only, and the elongated lenses concentrate the light emitted from each light emitting structure onto sub-pixel areas intended for a corresponding colour, so that a colour display may be provided without the use of colour filters.