ZrO2 coatings are widely employed to protect metal substrates from corrosion. However, achieving anti-corrosive ZrO2 coatings that also exhibit the full color range remains a significant challenge. Using the magnetron sputtering, the present study applied a ZrO2/Si multilayer coating to the 304 stainless steel, incorporating Si interlayers within a ZrO2 monolayer coating. The influence of incorporated Si interlayers on the morphology, structure, hardness, optical properties, and corrosion resistance of the ZrO2 coatings was systematically investigated. Application of Si interlayers effectively mitigated the development of columnar structure and pinhole defects in the ZrO2 coatings. This led to a reduction in the surface cluster size from 300 to 50 nm and the average grain size of ZrO2 from 20.3 to 15.7 nm. As a result, ZrO2 coating exhibited significant improvement in corrosion resistance. After adding Si interlayers, the corrosion current density of the ZrO2 coating dropped from 3.76 × 10-6 to 4.69 × 10-8 A/cm2 in 1 mol/L H2SO4 solution, while it dropped from 6.81 × 10-8 to 2.57 × 10-10 A/cm2 in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution. The ZrO2/Si multilayer coatings exhibited different colors, including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and purple. These colors were achieved by varying the thickness of the ZrO2 top layer, which was set at 240, 220, 210, 190, 175, 160, and 150 nm, respectively. The present study provided detailed insights into the color tuning capability and the enhanced corrosion resistance of ZrO2/Si multilayer coatings.