Given two complete cotorsion pairs \((\mathcal {X}_1,\mathcal {Y}_1)\) and \((\mathcal {X}_2,\mathcal {Y}_2)\) in an exact category with \(\mathcal {X}_1\subseteq \mathcal {Y}_2\) , we prove that \(\left( \textrm{Smd}\langle \mathcal {X}_1,\mathcal {X}_2 \rangle ,\mathcal {Y}_1\cap \mathcal {Y}_2\right) \) is also a complete cotorsion pair, where \(\textrm{Smd}\langle \mathcal {X}_1,\mathcal {X}_2 \rangle \) is the class of direct summands of extension of \(\mathcal {X}_1\) and \(\mathcal {X}_2\) . As an application, we construct complete cotorsion pairs, such as \((^\perp \mathcal{G}\mathcal{I}^{\leqslant n},\mathcal{G}\mathcal{I}^{\leqslant n})\) , where \(\mathcal{G}\mathcal{I}^{\leqslant n}\) is the class of modules of Gorenstein injective dimension at most n. And we also characterize the left orthogonal class of exact complexes of injective modules and the classes of modules with finite Gorenstein projective, Gorenstein flat, and PGF dimensions.
