diff --git a/lib/fs/promises.js b/lib/fs/promises.js
index a36d845d5177fa..8884777e5e16de 100644
--- a/lib/fs/promises.js
+++ b/lib/fs/promises.js
@@ -157,7 +157,12 @@ async function readFileHandle(filehandle, options) {
       chunks.push(buffer.slice(0, totalRead));
   } while (totalRead === chunkSize);
 
-  return Buffer.concat(chunks);
+  const result = Buffer.concat(chunks);
+  if (options.encoding) {
+    return result.toString(options.encoding);
+  } else {
+    return result;
+  }
 }
 
 // All of the functions are defined as async in order to ensure that errors
diff --git a/test/parallel/test-fs-promises-writefile.js b/test/parallel/test-fs-promises-writefile.js
index e2ae289b180bc2..280bce864229ce 100644
--- a/test/parallel/test-fs-promises-writefile.js
+++ b/test/parallel/test-fs-promises-writefile.js
@@ -35,7 +35,15 @@ async function doRead() {
   assert.deepStrictEqual(buf, data);
 }
 
+async function doReadWithEncoding() {
+  const data = await fsPromises.readFile(dest, 'utf-8');
+  const syncData = fs.readFileSync(dest, 'utf-8');
+  assert.strictEqual(typeof data, 'string');
+  assert.deepStrictEqual(data, syncData);
+}
+
 doWrite()
   .then(doAppend)
   .then(doRead)
+  .then(doReadWithEncoding)
   .then(common.mustCall());