The humidity effect
Lower humidity makes a given temperature feel cooler because it's easier for sweat to evaporate off your skin — evaporation is the body's primary cooling mechanism, and it works better in dry air than saturated air. One source discussing home humidity control cites that most people feel cooler at 75°F with 50–55% relative humidity than at the same 75°F with higher humidity — the temperature is identical, but the perceived comfort isn't.
The fan effect
A ceiling fan doesn't lower a room's actual temperature — it speeds up evaporation from your skin, the same mechanism as the humidity effect, applied more directly. The US Department of Energy states plainly that a ceiling fan "allows you to raise the thermostat setting about 4°F with no reduction in comfort" — roughly 2.2°C of headroom, backed by one of the more widely-cited official figures in home energy guidance.
Why these two effects aren't a coincidence — they reinforce each other
A fan's cooling trick depends on there being somewhere for that evaporated sweat to go. In saturated, humid air, there isn't much room — the air is already close to holding as much moisture as it can. Dry mode is what creates that room in the first place, by actively removing moisture from the air. Recommending a fan alongside Dry Mode isn't two unrelated tips bolted together — the fan's effect works better specifically because Dry Mode is already running.
What this means in practice
If you're already in Dry Mode (see our Dry Mode savings article) and it locks at a fixed temperature on your unit, adding a fan is still worth doing — the comfort headroom doesn't require an adjustable setpoint to matter, since it changes how the same fixed temperature feels. If your unit does let you adjust the dry-mode temperature, this headroom is what lets you dial it up without the room feeling any different.