Julie Carlson

Julie Carlson is an American writer and co-founder of the interior design and lifestyle website Remodelista and outdoor spaces and garden design website Gardenista operated by the holding company Remodelista LLC, owned by Carlson and her husband, Josh Groves. Carlson is the Editor-in-Chief of Remodelista and author of Remodelista: A Manual for the Considered Home (2013) and Remodelista: The Organized Home: Simple, Stylish Storage Ideas for All Over the House (2017).

Julie Carlson grew up in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Her mother, Jocelyn Carlson Balzell, was a graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Education, as well as a Fulbright Scholar who became the NYC intellectual, sets go-to luncheon organizer as the associate director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University where she was fired for inviting Hillary Rodham Clinton to one of their lunch meetings.

 Carlson's stepfather, Edward Digby Baltzell, was an eminent professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His book The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America credited him with popularizing the acronym WASP. Carlson's father, Sten Carlson, went to Yale and Colombia before becoming one of the top-producing fishermen on Cape Cod. During one excursion in Cuba, the Cuban Navy seized his boat, possibly thinking he was a spy.

Carlson attended Brown University, from which she graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Carlson worked at Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies before beginning her writing career on the editorial team of The New Yorker as a copy editor. Subsequently, she became a food and style editor at San Francisco Magazine and has been featured in various publications, including Food & Wine and The Washington Post.

In 2007, Carlson co-founded Remodelista with Francesca Connolly, Janet Hall, and Sarah Lonsdale to provide an online sourcebook for users planning a home renovation or remodeling to furnish rooms with a mix of classics, vintage finds, and modernist pieces. In 2011, Remodelista was acquired by San Francisco company SAY Media.

In 2012, Carlson co-founded Gardenista, an outdoor spaces and garden design website, with former New York Times columnist Michelle Slatalla under SAY Media's ownership. In 2015, Carlson and their husband, Josh Groves, bought Remodelista and Gardenista from SAY Media for an undisclosed amount.

In 2016, Remodelista and Gardenista were acquired by Realtor.com, operated by the News Corporation subsidiary Move, Inc. At the time of sale, the two sites reportedly received 1.5 million readers per month. In 2017, Carlson launched another companion site, The Organized Home, in conjunction with the publication of the book Remodelista: The Organized Home.

In 2019, Carlson and husband Josh Groves bought back Remodelista, Gardenista, and The Organized Home from Realtor.com and currently operate the sites as part of the holding company Remodelista LLC, which Groves is CEO of. Few details surrounding the deal were released, but they reported that the combined readership of the sites reached 1.7 million users per month.