background-position: center and background-repeat: repeat-y
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xml:lang='en'> <head> <title>background-position</title> <style rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'> div#repeat-y-single { width: 100px; height: 100px; border: 1px solid rgb(234, 234, 234); margin: 4px; float: left; background-image: url('http://www.java2s.com/style/logo.png'); background-position: center; background-repeat: repeat-y; } </style> </head> <body> <div id='repeat-y-single'></div> </body> </html>