Can I get a web element inside another web element?

Yo dawg I heard you like web elements...

So I would like to know if it is possible to find a web element by class, id or any other selector and then inside that find another element by class etc.

Background

I have some container with an id that contains a collection of elements I want to put into a list by class, the problem is that if I try to getElements(By.class) it will pick up some elements outside that I don't want.

Attempted

I have tried doing it with XPATHbut it feels dirty like hard coding. Since these tests should be robust I thought there must be a better way of doing it.

This code captures elements outside of what I want

public double checkStars(){
    List<WebElement> starsOn = driver.findElements(By.className("on"));
    return starsOn.size();
}

Question

Can I select a web element when limiting the search to inside another web element and how is it done?