In this paper, an energy-efficient localization algorithm is proposed for precise localization in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and the process is accomplished in three steps. Firstly, the beacon nodes discover their one-hop neighbor nodes with additional tone requests and reply packets over the media access control (MAC) layer to avoid collision of packets. Secondly, the discovered one-hop unknown nodes are divided into two sets, i.e. unknown nodes with direct communication, and with indirect communication for energy efficiency. In direct communication, source beacon nodes forward the information directly to the unknown nodes, but a common beacon node is selected for communication which reduces overall energy consumption during transmission in indirect communication. Finally, a correction factor is also introduced, and localized unknown nodes are upgraded into helper nodes for reducing the localization error. To analyze the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, various simulations are conducted and compared with the existing algorithms.