diff --git a/decoder.go b/decoder.go
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..705873c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/decoder.go
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+package properties
+
+import (
+	"fmt"
+	"io"
+	"io/ioutil"
+)
+
+type Decoder struct {
+	r io.Reader
+}
+
+type Encoding uint
+
+const (
+	UTF8 Encoding = 1 << iota
+	ISO_8859_1
+)
+
+func NewDecoder(r io.Reader) *Decoder {
+	return &Decoder{r: r}
+}
+
+func (d *Decoder) Decode() (*Properties, error) {
+	return decode(d.r, ISO_8859_1)
+}
+
+func (d *Decoder) DecodeWithEncoding(enc Encoding) (*Properties, error) {
+	return decode(d.r, enc)
+}
+
+func decode(r io.Reader, enc Encoding) (*Properties, error) {
+	buf, err := ioutil.ReadAll(r)
+	if err != nil {
+		return nil, err
+	}
+
+	return newParser().Parse(convert(buf, enc))
+}
+
+// The Java properties spec says that .properties files must be ISO-8859-1
+// encoded. Since the first 256 unicode code points cover ISO-8859-1 we
+// can convert each byte into a rune and use the resulting string
+// as UTF-8 input for the parser.
+func convert(buf []byte, enc Encoding) string {
+	switch enc {
+	case UTF8:
+		return string(buf)
+	case ISO_8859_1:
+		runes := make([]rune, len(buf))
+		for i, b := range buf {
+			runes[i] = rune(b)
+		}
+		return string(runes)
+	default:
+		panic(fmt.Sprintf("unsupported encoding %v", enc))
+	}
+}
diff --git a/properties.go b/properties.go
index 86e68d0..15e707c 100644
--- a/properties.go
+++ b/properties.go
@@ -2,40 +2,10 @@
 
 package properties
 
-import (
-	"fmt"
-	"io"
-	"io/ioutil"
-	"unicode/utf8"
-)
-
 type Properties struct {
 	m map[string]string
 }
 
-// Reads bytes fully and parses them as ISO-8859-1.
-func NewProperties(r io.Reader) (*Properties, error) {
-	buf, err := ioutil.ReadAll(r)
-	if err != nil {
-		return nil, err
-	}
-
-	return NewPropertiesFromString(toUtf8(buf))
-}
-
-func NewPropertiesFromISO8859_1(buf []byte) (*Properties, error) {
-	return newParser().Parse(toUtf8(buf))
-}
-
-// Java properties spec says that .properties files must be ISO-8859-1
-// encoded. Therefore, we first convert them to UTF-8 and then parse them.
-func NewPropertiesFromString(input string) (*Properties, error) {
-	if err := isISO8859_1(input); err != nil {
-		return nil, err
-	}
-	return newParser().Parse(input)
-}
-
 // returns the value for the given key
 func (p *Properties) Get(key string) (value string, ok bool) {
 	value, ok = p.m[key]
@@ -57,23 +27,3 @@
 func (p *Properties) Len() int {
 	return len(p.m)
 }
-
-// taken from
-// http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13510458/golang-convert-iso8859-1-to-utf8
-func toUtf8(iso8859_1_buf []byte) string {
-	buf := make([]rune, len(iso8859_1_buf))
-	for i, b := range iso8859_1_buf {
-		buf[i] = rune(b)
-	}
-	return string(buf)
-}
-
-func isISO8859_1(s string) error {
-	for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
-		r, w := utf8.DecodeRuneInString(s[i:])
-		if w > 1 || r > 255 {
-			return fmt.Errorf("invalid ISO-8859-1 input. %s", s)
-		}
-	}
-	return nil
-}
diff --git a/properties_test.go b/properties_test.go
index 08cfb1e..a0c8102 100644
--- a/properties_test.go
+++ b/properties_test.go
@@ -78,10 +78,6 @@
 	testError(c, "key", "premature EOF")
 }
 
-func (l *LoadSuite) TestFailWithNonISO8859_1Input(c *C) {
-	testError(c, "key₡", "invalid ISO-8859-1 input")
-}
-
 func (l *LoadSuite) TestFailWithInvalidUnicodeLiteralInKey(c *C) {
 	testError(c, "key\\ugh32 = value", "invalid unicode literal")
 }
@@ -93,7 +89,8 @@
 	}
 	b.ResetTimer()
 	for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
-		NewPropertiesFromString(input)
+		d := NewDecoder(strings.NewReader(input))
+		d.Decode()
 	}
 }
 
@@ -108,7 +105,8 @@
 
 // tests key/value pairs for a given input.
 func testKeyValue(c *C, input string, keyvalues ...string) {
-	p, err := NewPropertiesFromString(input)
+	d := NewDecoder(strings.NewReader(input))
+	p, err := d.Decode()
 	c.Assert(err, IsNil)
 	c.Assert(p, NotNil)
 	c.Assert(p.Len(), Equals, len(keyvalues)/2)
@@ -119,7 +117,8 @@
 
 // tests whether a given input produces a given error message.
 func testError(c *C, input, msg string) {
-	_, err := NewPropertiesFromString(input)
+	d := NewDecoder(strings.NewReader(input))
+	_, err := d.Decode()
 	c.Assert(err, NotNil)
 	c.Assert(strings.Contains(err.Error(), msg), Equals, true)
 }