Haute Inerior : Design: Fari’s insistence on perfection frustrates some, but has won him a devoted clientele.

Half a dozen 22-foot king palms had just been planted in front of the Big Canyon home of Clifford Heinz when Fari changes his mind.

“They weren’t right,” said the Iranian-born interior designer, who, like his famous brother Bijan, goes by his first name only. “They weren’t perfect. Yes, the crane was there, money was pouring out and it’s my money.”

But Fari decided queen palms would better complement the house, and so out went the kings. They became another casualty in the 39-year-old designer’s feverish pursuit of what he calls “this look.”

Another example: Once, while a client admired the mirrors just installed on a living room wall 45 feet wide and two stories high, the craftsman began taking the mirrored panes down. Fari’s orders.

“The seams weren’t right,” Fari explained offhandedly. “Installation.”

His insistence of perfection sometimes frustrates his business partner and wife, Melinda Pakzad, but it has earned Fari International Inc. a devoted clientele among Orange County’s elite.

“Clifford Heinz saw me tearing all those big palms out and he said, ‘Fari, why do you do it?’ ” Fari recalled. “I said, ‘It’s not perfect.’ He said, ‘I just tell you one thing: Don’t change. Don’t ever change.’ ”

Fari has no intention of changing.

For 15 years he has worked to build his business, beginning with a furniture and accessory shop in Laguna Beach, where he began cultivating a following, in part by telling prospective clients not to buy the chairs or door-pulls he sold because they “weren’t right.”

“We really wanted to make a reputation more than make a sale,” Fari said. “We were convinced that if you really do good, money will come.”

Gradually, the clients he’d advised not to buy came back to buy--and have their homes redesigned so those door-pulls would look right. Fari took on interior design jobs, then minor remodelings and major renovations.

He wasn’t content with small windows or low ceilings or confining walls. So he knocked out walls and put in large bay windows, added sculptural ceilings, put in paneling and new stair railings.

“You’ve spent $3 million or $4 million for an outdated house right on the ocean,” Fari explained. “Two dingy little windows. So you open up (the wall) to that ocean, put the bed on the other side (of the room) so you can see the ocean while you’re lying in the bed. Why did you buy this house to start with?”

His ability to transform rooms into opulent and refreshing environments led to complete reconstructions, and finally full design, construction, furnishing and landscaping of multimillion-dollar estates. He takes the project from the empty-lot stage to fine china on the dining room table. He now has a full-time staff of eight, including architects, project managers and a staff contractor who work on home-building jobs.

Over the past five years, Fari International has built six or seven homes, one Fari said was the highest-priced home sold in Orange County. His clients include Heinz, grandson of ketchup magnate H.J. Heinz and a retired industrialist and Richard Rodnick, president of the Geneva Cos., who has commissioned Fari for a third project.

Though Fari won’t reveal the firm’s revenues, a full home project can cost up to $5 million. Interior design for an entire home can cost up to $1.8 million.

And Fari knows that every dollar is for “this look,” the rich style he creates painstakingly by calculating the effects of a hammered gold ceiling over a black lacquer table and the compatibility of granite slab floors and rift oak paneling.

“It’s difficult for someone to understand what’s gone into it,” said Melinda, his 30-year-old wife. “Every single element that you see (in a room)--be it the color or a wall texture or the shape of a pillow or the corner of a table--has been thought out. A decision has been made.

“Fari is so demanding,” Melinda added, toying with a teacup. “He agonizes over ever single detail. If this is a teacup he’s trying to decide on for a house, he could sit here and analyze it for two hours.”

While his brother Bijan, the flamboyant fashion designer, caters to the nouveau riche from his boutiques on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles and Fifth Avenue in New York City, Fari works relatively inconspicuously in homes in exclusive local neighborhoods, such as Big Canyon, Harbor Isle, Linda Isle and Irvine Cove.

Fari and Melinda, who live in Corona del Mar with their 6-year-old daughter, are selective about for whom they work. They can afford to be; last year, Fari International had a four- to six-month waiting list.

“And we don’t advertise anywhere,” Fari said. “It’s all word of mouth.”

The look Fari’s clients seek is best illustrated by the photographs hanging in his Costa Mesa showroom. No matter which house a photo depicts, the same classic lines and modern surfaces dominate, surrounded by the soft sparkle of silk and the glow of the lights that peek from corners and moldings and soffits.

Fari labels it classic contemporary.

“We’re mixing the old with the new,” he said.

The chairs and sofas he and his wife have designed during the past 2 1/2 years for the Fari Classic Collection are adapted from English Regency and other antique styles. But the carved-wood chairs are less ornate and the down-filled upholstery is in plain silks--no heavy brocades or floral patterns.

Fari works primarily in naturals: ivory, bone, ecru, ebony. Color in a Fari interior is subtle--mere splashes in the fresh flowers, a painting, the firelight, reflections on the mirrored wall.

Fair sees an interior as a canvas.

“Color is a very sensitive issue to me,” he said. “When somebody says, ‘I want lots of color,’ I think of Denny’s restaurant and Las Vegas, and that’s definitely not something we do.”

Far more important to the wiry designer are textures, fabrics, shapes, lighting and architectural detail--and innovative ways of blending them all in an exciting and surprisingly practical environment.

In one home, for example, he installed 8-by-8-foot skylights, framed by soft lighting, that open with the touch of a button. In another, he covered one wall of a dining room with mirrors so guests sitting with their backs to the window saw the reflected view of the ocean and city below. Bronze beveled mirrors on wall sections also reflected city lights.

“It looks like you’re sitting in a jewelry box,” Fari said of the room.

His search for unique materials and accessories takes him all over the world. Silks are imported from China and Thailand. Chairs designed by Fari are hand carved at a factory in Valencia, Spain. Tables with mother-of-pearl inlay are finished in the Philippines. Leather for one chair was custom-dyed in Italy. And pure wool, hand-woven rugs were imported from Tibet; one sold for $45,000.

The materials give the furniture and accessories a look of richness and quality, but that’s not Fari’s pursuit.

“Quality is not the issue,” he said. “Quality is a given. What we are selling is this look, this flair.”

Perhaps as important as the “look” is the relationship Fari and Melinda have with their clients. Before taking any job, Fari and Melinda sit down with a prospective customer and talk to see if they can work together. The Pakzads want to like their clients, particularly if the job is full home construction, which takes up to two years.

“At least nine of 10 customers we talk to we don’t end up taking,” Fari said. “It’s with a handshake. That’s unheard of.”

Fari promises to deliver the job on time “on the budget or under the budget.” They guarantee the cost up front so clients pay for neither overruns nor delays. The policy has not only earned Fari several repeat customers, but appreciative clients who lavish the couple with gifts--once it was a chartered Learjet to San Francisco for a weekend of pampering.

The Pakzads treat their clients likewise. In some cases, they finish a two-year home construction job with a catered dinner or black-tie party at the fully furnished home. For one client, they threw a birthday party at the construction site when the house was still in the framing stage. Guests were asked to come in jeans and hard hats.

“Fari has an ability to see things in a scale that I can’t see,” Melinda said.

But his visions are constantly refined as a room takes shape.

“By the (end the rooms) are perfect,” he added. “But yes, I change it 10 million times in my mind.”