z-index and child selector
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <title></title> <style type='text/css'> div { position: absolute; padding: 10px; border: 1px solid black; background: red; width: 100px; height: 100px; top: 20px; left: 20px; z-index: 4; } div > div { background: lightblue; z-index: 3; } div > div > div { background: lightgreen; z-index: 2; } div > div > div > div { background: pink; z-index: 1; } </style> </head> <body> <div> <div> <div> <div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html>