In this article, a negative‐index metamaterial prism based on a composite unit cell containing a split‐ring resonator and a z‐dipole is designed and simulated. The design approach combines simulations of a single unit cell to identify the appropriate cell design (yielding the desired negative‐index behavior) together with subcell modeling (which simplifies the mesh representation of the resonator geometry and allows for a larger number of resonator cells to be handled). In addition to describing the methodology used to design a n = −1 refractive index prism, results including the effective‐medium parameters, the far‐field scattered patterns, and the near‐zone field distributions corresponding to a normally incident plane‐wave excitation of the prism are presented. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:537–540, 2015