I have searched but could not find the reason for this behavior. I have a UIButton whose image I am setting. Here is how the button should appear. Note that this is just a photoshop of the intended button design: Essentially, it is a square custom UIButton with a white border and a little surrounding shadow. In the upper right corner, there is a "X" mark, that will be added programmatically as a subview. Here is the screenshot of the button within the actual app. At this point, I have only added a shadow and the X mark as a subview: How, when I try to add the white border, here is what it looks like: It seems that the white border is appearing above the X mark sublayer. I don't know why. Here is the code that I am using: // selectedPhotoButton is the UIButton with UIImage set earlier // At this point, I am adding in the shadow [selectedPhotoButton layer] setShadowColor:[[UIColor lightGrayColor] CGColor]]; [[selectedPhotoButton layer] setShadowOffset: CGSizeMake(1.0f, 1.0f)]; [[selectedPhotoButton layer] setShadowRadius:0.5f]; [[selectedPhotoButton layer] setShadowOpacity:1.0f]; // Now add the white border [[selectedPhotoButton layer] setBorderColor:[[UIColor whiteColor] CGColor]]; [[selectedPhotoButton layer] setBorderWidth:2.0]; // Now add the X mark subview UIImage *deleteImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"nocheck_photo.png"]; UIImageView *deleteMark = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(53, -5, 27, 27)]; deleteMark.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit; [deleteMark setImage:deleteImage]; [selectedPhotoButton addSubview:deleteMark]; [deleteMark release]; I don't understand why the border is appearing above the deleteMark subview. Is there any way to get the intended effect? Thank you!