Existing fuzzy control methods do not perform well when applied to systems containing nonlinearities arising from unknown deadzones. In particular, we show that a usual ''fuzzy PD'' controller applied to a system with a deadzone suffers from poor transient performance and a large steady-state error. In this paper, we propose a novel two-layered fuzzy logic controller for controlling systems with deadzones. The two-layered control structure consists of a fuzzy logic-based precompensator followed by a usual fuzzy PD controller. Our proposed controller exhibits superior transient and steady-state performance compared to usual fuzzy PD controllers. In addition, the controller is robust to variations in deadzone nonlinearities. We illustrate the effectiveness of our scheme using computer simulation examples.