Another formal element typical of Procida's architectural style is the skillful use of colours for painting houses. The strong integrating character of this architecture could potentially flatten differences of form so that individual characteristics may disappear. On the contrary, in Corricella village it is possible to make out individual forms thanks to the conscious use of colours defining building units, which makes them stand out from the complex structural weave of houses joined together. In the beginning, painting houses had practical purpose: to protect the material with which the houses were built (tufa, a tender and friable volcanic rock) from the destructive actions of weather and sea salt. But soon it became a formal process used consciously in order to distinguish each property from bordering ones.

The use of coloured paints for buildings on Procida was characteristic of volcanic islands, because of the difficulties and costs of transportation, at those time limited only to luxury wares. Buildings on calcareous islands (e.g., Capri) were characteristically whitewashed using calcium oxide, obtained by the local limestone. So houses in calcareous islands were all in white. In contrast, volcanic islands had available a large variety of colours, obtained by mixing different amounts of indigenous materials (tufa powders, from yellow and red to brown and dark gray) by which were obtained several gradations of warm pastel colours. Nowadays these differences are vanishing because of the development of transportation and the industrial production of building materials.