diff --git a/doc/api/http.markdown b/doc/api/http.markdown
index e93aa2d2ddf..d992bdffa3e 100644
--- a/doc/api/http.markdown
+++ b/doc/api/http.markdown
@@ -413,7 +413,9 @@ Options:
 - `socketPath`: Unix Domain Socket (use one of host:port or socketPath)
 - `method`: A string specifying the HTTP request method. Defaults to `'GET'`.
 - `path`: Request path. Defaults to `'/'`. Should include query string if any.
-  E.G. `'/index.html?page=12'`
+  E.G. `'/index.html?page=12'`. An exception is thrown when the request path
+  contains illegal characters. Currently, only spaces are rejected but that
+  may change in the future.
 - `headers`: An object containing request headers.
 - `auth`: Basic authentication i.e. `'user:password'` to compute an
   Authorization header.
diff --git a/lib/http.js b/lib/http.js
index c45af98b9de..a1abd1e2e0e 100644
--- a/lib/http.js
+++ b/lib/http.js
@@ -52,11 +52,14 @@ var ClientRequest = exports.ClientRequest = client.ClientRequest;
 exports.request = function(options, cb) {
   if (typeof options === 'string') {
     options = url.parse(options);
-  } else if (options && options.path) {
-    options = util._extend({}, options);
-    options.path = encodeURI(options.path);
-    // encodeURI() doesn't escape quotes while url.parse() does. Fix up.
-    options.path = options.path.replace(/'/g, '%27');
+  } else if (options && options.path && / /.test(options.path)) {
+    // The actual regex is more like /[^A-Za-z0-9\-._~!$&'()*+,;=/:@]/
+    // with an additional rule for ignoring percentage-escaped characters
+    // but that's a) hard to capture in a regular expression that performs
+    // well, and b) possibly too restrictive for real-world usage. That's
+    // why it only scans for spaces because those are guaranteed to create
+    // an invalid request.
+    throw new TypeError('Request path contains unescaped characters.');
   }
 
   if (options.protocol && options.protocol !== 'http:') {
diff --git a/test/simple/test-http-client-escape-path.js b/test/simple/test-http-client-unescaped-path.js
similarity index 50%
rename from test/simple/test-http-client-escape-path.js
rename to test/simple/test-http-client-unescaped-path.js
index 0178c823ba2..376bca19c46 100644
--- a/test/simple/test-http-client-escape-path.js
+++ b/test/simple/test-http-client-unescaped-path.js
@@ -22,54 +22,8 @@
 var common = require('../common');
 var assert = require('assert');
 var http = require('http');
-var util = require('util');
 
-first();
-
-function first() {
-  test('/~username/', '/~username/', second);
-}
-function second() {
-  test('/\'foo bar\'', '/%27foo%20bar%27', third);
-}
-function third() {
-  var expected = '/%3C%3E%22%60%20%0D%0A%09%7B%7D%7C%5C%5E~%60%27';
-  test('/<>"` \r\n\t{}|\\^~`\'', expected);
-}
-
-function test(path, expected, next) {
-  function helper(arg, next) {
-    var server = http.createServer(function(req, res) {
-      assert.equal(req.url, expected);
-      res.end('OK');
-      server.close(next);
-    });
-    server.on('clientError', function(err) {
-      throw err;
-    });
-    server.listen(common.PORT, '127.0.0.1', function() {
-      http.get(arg);
-    });
-  }
-
-  // Go the extra mile to ensure that the behavior of
-  // http.get("http://example.com/...") matches http.get({ path: ... }).
-  test1();
-
-  function test1() {
-    console.log('as url: ' + util.inspect(path));
-    helper('http://127.0.0.1:' + common.PORT + path, test2);
-  }
-  function test2() {
-    var options = {
-      host: '127.0.0.1',
-      port: common.PORT,
-      path: path
-    };
-    console.log('as options: ' + util.inspect(options));
-    helper(options, done);
-  }
-  function done() {
-    if (next) next();
-  }
-}
+assert.throws(function() {
+  // Path with spaces in it should throw.
+  http.get({ path: 'bad path' }, assert.fail);
+}, /contains unescaped characters/);