diff --git a/cinder/api/openstack/wsgi.py b/cinder/api/openstack/wsgi.py
index 5e966756ba1..ed93b6caef6 100644
--- a/cinder/api/openstack/wsgi.py
+++ b/cinder/api/openstack/wsgi.py
@@ -1165,12 +1165,9 @@ class Resource(wsgi.Application):
         if hasattr(response, 'headers'):
             for hdr, val in response.headers.items():
                 # Headers must be utf-8 strings
-                try:
-                    # python 2.x
-                    response.headers[hdr] = val.encode('utf-8')
-                except Exception:
-                    # python 3.x
-                    response.headers[hdr] = six.text_type(val)
+                val = utils.convert_str(val)
+
+                response.headers[hdr] = val
 
             if (not request.api_version_request.is_null() and
                not self._is_legacy_endpoint(request)):
diff --git a/cinder/utils.py b/cinder/utils.py
index e4bc2978bc8..a501b8295c9 100644
--- a/cinder/utils.py
+++ b/cinder/utils.py
@@ -836,7 +836,7 @@ def convert_str(text):
     * convert to Unicode on Python 3: decode bytes from UTF-8
     """
     if six.PY2:
-        return encodeutils.safe_encode(text)
+        return encodeutils.to_utf8(text)
     else:
         if isinstance(text, bytes):
             return text.decode('utf-8')