diff --git a/src/spatialdata_plot/pl/render.py b/src/spatialdata_plot/pl/render.py
index c2f8133a..e0d05d31 100644
--- a/src/spatialdata_plot/pl/render.py
+++ b/src/spatialdata_plot/pl/render.py
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
 from datatree import DataTree
 from matplotlib.cm import ScalarMappable
 from matplotlib.colors import ListedColormap, Normalize
+from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1.axes_divider import make_axes_locatable
 from scanpy._settings import settings as sc_settings
 from spatialdata import get_extent
 from spatialdata.models import PointsModel, get_table_keys
@@ -624,8 +625,10 @@ def _render_images(
         _ax_show_and_transform(layer, trans_data, ax, cmap=cmap, zorder=render_params.zorder)
 
         if legend_params.colorbar:
+            ax_divider = make_axes_locatable(ax)
             sm = plt.cm.ScalarMappable(cmap=cmap, norm=render_params.cmap_params.norm)
-            fig_params.fig.colorbar(sm, ax=ax)
+            cax = ax_divider.append_axes("right", size="7%", pad="2%")
+            fig_params.fig.colorbar(sm, ax=ax, cax=cax)
 
     # 2) Image has any number of channels but 1
     else:
diff --git a/src/spatialdata_plot/pl/utils.py b/src/spatialdata_plot/pl/utils.py
index 33a103da..5e22aa21 100644
--- a/src/spatialdata_plot/pl/utils.py
+++ b/src/spatialdata_plot/pl/utils.py
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@
 from matplotlib.gridspec import GridSpec
 from matplotlib.transforms import CompositeGenericTransform
 from matplotlib_scalebar.scalebar import ScaleBar
+from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1.axes_divider import make_axes_locatable
 from numpy.ma.core import MaskedArray
 from numpy.random import default_rng
 from pandas.api.types import CategoricalDtype
@@ -1016,7 +1017,9 @@ def _decorate_axs(
             )
         elif colorbar:
             # TODO: na_in_legend should have some effect here
-            cb = plt.colorbar(cax, ax=ax, pad=0.01, fraction=0.08, aspect=30)
+            ax_divider = make_axes_locatable(ax)
+            cax2 = ax_divider.append_axes("right", size="5%", pad="2%")
+            cb = fig_params.fig.colorbar(cax, ax=ax, cax=cax2)
             cb.solids.set_alpha(alpha)
 
     if isinstance(scalebar_dx, list) and isinstance(scalebar_units, list):