Subview appears underneath superviews layer.border?

Depending on your view structure, it might be easier to add the subview to the parent of your main view. It can then overlap the main view and will overlay the border as you requested.

According to the Apple specification: It is composited above the receiver’s contents and sublayers.

So, the border will always be above of all your subviews, even if you bring your subview to the front and so on.

So I make a background view to fake the border.

E.g.:

UIView *backgroundView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(100, 100, 200, 200)];
backgroundView.backgroundColor = [UIColor blackColor];
backgroundView.clipsToBounds = NO;

UIView *bView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectInset(backgroundView.bounds, 3, 3)];
bView.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor];

UIView *cView = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(-50, -50, 100, 100)];
cView.backgroundColor = [UIColor yellowColor];
[bView addSubview:cView];

[backgroundView addSubview:bView];

[self.window addSubview:backgroundView];

and the effect: