Also, there is the addition of two columns before the presbytery in this church. The relative narrowness of the triumphal arch, for reasons of stability, created a discordance between the wide nave and the narrow passage into the presbytery, and the two columns was a clever artistic and architectural solution which resolved the aesthetic problems by removing the discrepancy between the dimensions of the nave and those of the entry to the sanctuary.
There are elements within this church, however, that distinguish it from the Church of St. Shenute in the White Monastery. In the White Monastery, considerable building material was robbed from edifices dating to the pharaonic or Roman period, while in the Red Monastery church of St. Pshoi, the portals and columns (bases, shafts and capitals) were made for this building.