Disclosed herein are an apparatus to recognize an illumination environment of a vehicle and a control method thereof. The apparatus includes an infrared illumination sensor to detect an infrared illumination amount emitted from the sun, a camera, and an illumination environment recognition unit which detects the infrared illumination amount by the infrared illumination sensor, receives a camera exposure time from the camera, receives double exposure images captured to have different exposure values, calculates a general illumination value based on the detected infrared illumination amount, the received camera exposure time, and an illumination value obtained through an image clustering analysis of the double exposure images, calculates a rate of change in the calculated general illumination value, and recognizes a current illumination environment as an illumination environment for each time section based on the calculated general illumination value and the rate of change in the general illumination value.