With the aim of reducing surface reflections and increasing the diffraction efficiency we investigated the superposition of subwavelength phase gratings onto blazed phase gratings. With direct-write electron-beam lithography bare blazed gratings and blazed gratings carrying subwavelength gratings were fabricated and their optical performances compared. For TE polarization the subwavelength-carrying gratings showed a maximum diffraction efficiency of 90.6%, whereas the corresponding maximum value for the bare grating was 86.3%. The experiment was simulated with rigorous diffraction theory.