Data to be stored in a data block for a columnar database table may be compressed according to a multi-level compression scheme. Data to be stored in the data block may be received. The data may be compressed according a column-specific compression technique to produce compressed data. The compressed data may then be compressed according to a second compression technique different than the column-specific compression technique to produce multi-level compressed data. The multi-level compressed data may be stored in the data block. When reading from the data block, multi-level compressed data may be decompressed according to the column-specific compression technique and the default compression technique applied to the data.