A liquid crystal display (LCD) device including an LCD panel and a backlight. The backlight includes a plurality of light sources to emit light, and a reflective stack. The reflective stack is positioned to receive light emitted from the light sources and transmit the light to the LCD panel. The reflective stack includes optical elements providing a folded beam path for the light emitted from the light sources to the LCD panel. The light emitted from the light sources is diffused while propagating towards and away from the LCD panel along the folded beam path. The folded beam path has an optical distance that is longer than the spatial distance between the light sources and the LCD panel to improve light diffusion by the backlight without substantially increasing backlight thickness.