Summary: A multistage decoding algorithm is given for lattices obtained from a multilevel code formula. The algorithm is shown to have the same effective error-correcting radius as maximum-likelihood decoding, so that the performance loss is essentially determined by the increase in the effective error coefficient, for which an expression is given. The code formula generalizes some previous multilevel constructions to constructions of known single-level binary lattices with many levels, and then to decoders for them with the proposed algorithm. The trade-off between complexity reduction and performance loss is evaluated for several known lattices and two new ones, indicating that the approach is effective provided the binary codes involved in the code formula are not too short.