Word for someone who “really likes and pays close attention to symmetry”

Solution 1:

Apparently there's a word, "symmetrist," defined as someone "eminently studious of symmetry of parts."

Solution 2:

Well there is a word in the dictionary for the opposite of a person who likes or pays attention to symmetry, as the Oxford English Dictionary has it:

symmetrophobia
(ˌsɪmɪtrəʊˈfəʊbɪə)
Also symmetriphobia.
[irreg. f. symmetry + -o + -phobia. ] Dread or avoidance of symmetry, as shown or supposed to be shown in Egyptian temples, Japanese art, etc.
1809 W. R. Hamilton Remarks Turkey i. 131 Another instance of the Symmetrophobia of the architects of antient Egypt is visible in the difference of the spaces between the sphinxes and crio-sphinxes. 1865 J. Fergusson Hist. Archit. i. iv. I. 103 The buildings..are..generally affected with a symmetriphobia that it is difficult to understand. 1881 R. S. Poole in Contemp. Rev. Sept. 373 Symmetrophobia, shown in the placing columns of different orders opposite one another, and a colonnade on one side only of a court. 1894 Lockyer Dawn Astron. viii. 75 At Karnak..we can see how closely the walls reflect the orientation of the included temples, even when they seem most liable to the suggestion of symmetrophobia.

Although it is not explained in the above definition, the suffix '-phobia' modifies the main word so as to imply a fear or strong aversion.

It is interesting that there is apparently no clear preference for spelling in these words between symmetro- and symmetri-. This might warrant a question in it's own right, but I will continue to use both versions in this discussion.

One might reasonably conclude from this that either 'Symmetrophilia' or 'Symmetriphilia' could be legitimate words describing an inclination towards or a taste for symmetry. The Greek suffix '-philia' implies 'like' or 'love' in relation to the word it modifies.

Following this some logic, a person who was pleased by or inclined to maintain symmetry might be called a 'symmetrophile' or 'symmetriphile'. In these cases the Greek suffix '-phile' suggests a person or thing that 'likes' or 'loves' the condition described by the word being modified.

A person who had an obsession with creating and/or maintaining symmetry might be called a 'symmetrophiliac' or 'symmetriphiliac'. Although there is no 'hard-and-fast' rule, the Greek suffix '-philiac' is usually used to indicate a more extreme attraction (or medically classifiable relationship) of a person (but not thing) to the condition described by the word being modified.

'Symmetry' is an absolute term (it either exists or it does not), and it has a word for its opposite state, 'assymmetry'. This creates a class of words for affection, obsession, or aversion to the opposite of symmetry. Thus, a person who was an 'asymmetrophobe' would be the same as a 'symmetrophile'.

The table below shows the relationship between most of the variations of the words. The 'bolded' versions in the 'Word' columns have entries in standard dictionaries. The others do not appear in dictionaries, and are mentioned only very rarely (http://writeworld.org/philiaquirks) or at all on the internet.

Note that an 'answer' to the OP's question is in the highlighted boxes in the table.

We can use Google's Ngram analytics to examine the frequency with which variations on these words occur in books between 1500 and 2008. Firstly using the _'symmetro-' spelling:

Google's Ngram analytics returned no results for the _'symmetri-' spelling of these words. Those familiar with Ngrams will know that the results should be treated with some caution - for instance 'symmetriphobia' appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as we have seen in the extract quoted at the beginning of this answer.

A related concept is 'koinophilia' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koinophilia) which describes a preference for appearances or arrangements which are deemed to be 'usual' as opposed to 'unusual'. In biology, symmetry in bodily features is a frequently postulated to be a significant factor in mate selection. Furthermore, there are suggestions that symmetry is a fundamental characteristic of nature, and to whatever extent this is true, symmetrophilia might be considered a subset of koinophilia. But assumptions about our preference for symmetry, or our ability to see it in nature are challenged in this article: http://www.livescience.com/4002-symmetry-nature-fundamental-fact-human-bias.html.

One is left to speculate that the absence of a word to specifically describe a preference for symmetry might reflect a human bias towards symmetry and a general view that it, and a preference for it, is perfectly natural, and not requiring a special word. On this same consideration, an aversion to symmetry would be considered unusual and deserving of a word to describe that state, such as 'symmetrophobia', first recorded from 1809 in the OED.

The assistance of Stack Exchange EL&A members in developing an answer to this question - particularly Graffito - is acknowledged and appreciated.

Solution 3:

This term fits better in the previous example:

I am very into feng shui. I pay very close attention to symmetry.

An interior decorator that knows what they're doing, doesn't have to make everything look symmetrical, it has to feel symmetrical. It has to be balanced, properly using qi while applying feng shui. It has to flow.

Feng shui is one of the Five Arts of Chinese Metaphysics, classified as physiognomy (observation of appearances through formulas and calculations). The feng shui practice discusses architecture in metaphoric terms of "invisible forces" that bind the universe, earth, and humanity together, known as qi.