The present disclosure is related to the liquid crystal display device and the driving method for selectively controlling the average picture level. The liquid crystal display device of the present disclosure comprises: a brightness extractor separating a brightness and a color difference information from an input image; an user interface receiving a limit APL; an APL restrictor calculating an average APL of the input image based on the brightness from the brightness extractor, modulating the brightness of the input image such that the average APL is restricted lower than the limit APL when the average APL of input image is higher than the limit APL, and converting the modulated brightness and the color difference information into a RGB data; and a driving circuit representing the RGB data from the APL restrictor on a liquid crystal display panel.