I have a JTree and I am trying to have a customized look and feel to it, but I am having problems with my cell rendering. Even after writing my own cell renderer, I find that a blue rectangle region marks which cell is selected in the tree, the default for the java look and feel. Any area on the tree that is not painted by the cell renderer is painted by this blue rectangle, if it lies within the vertical span of the tree cell. As a result, my cell renderer draws and then blue tabs stick out to either side. Is there any way to get rid of the blue highlighting? It seems this is being drawn by the tree, and not the cell, but I cannot find any documentation.