The Los Altos City Council said no to plans for an underground garage at a home in the 2000 block of Crist Drive.
The owners of the house, Ernaz and Mahyar Irani, had already been turned down by the city's Architectural and Site Control Committee.
But they appealed the decision to the council.
"We got the idea (of an underground garage) from other properties in the neighborhood," Ernaz Irani told the council at its Jan. 12 meeting.
But A&S said no because an underground garage below a two-story house, on a level street, would create the appearance of a three-story home, said Shanta Frantz, a building and planning technician with Los Altos.
There are a few underground garages with single family homes in Los Altos. But typically they are in a hillside, on a flag lot and not visible from the street or on a corner lot and not visible from the front of the house, officials said.
"The ones that have been approved have been carefully designed to be compatible" with their neighborhood, said city planning director Larry Tong.
In this case, the garage "directly faced the street and was immediately visible and not appropriate" for the neighborhood, Tong said.
Several neighbors wrote the city in support of the underground garage, citing cars in the driveway would not visible, the front of the house would not be dominated by garage doors and the house could have more floor area for living space.
Council members praised the "nicely designed house" and voted to waive a portion of the appeal fee.
But they stood firm that the city's residential design guidelines "are quite clear" that an underground garage in this case was not OK.