Due to the strong connections between research on illuminant estimation problems and chromatic adaptation phenomena, it was believed that application of chromatic adaptation models would be helpful in solving the problems of illuminant estimation. This article introduced an illuminant estimation method based on the fundamental chromatic adaptation model, the von Kries Model. Through image transformation and the comparison between image gamuts and reference gamut, the method is designed to simulate the adjustment of visual systems, transforming the image to be as if taken under the reference illuminant. Then, the estimation of scene illuminant was deduced from the transformation coefficients. Gamut comparison was repeated at each intensity level in the three-dimensional (x, y, y) color space to maintain the three-channel color information of images and to simplify the calculation. Experimental results illustrate the efficiency of this proposed method.